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STUDIES 



IN 



MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 



:by 



CHARLES J: STILLE, LL.D., 



LATE PROVOST 



OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



).. 



SECOND EDITION. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPmCOTT & CO. 

LONDON: 16 SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND. 

1883. 



Copyright, 1882 and 1883, by Charles J. Stille. 



ins 



TO THE HONOEABLE 

J. I. CLARK HARE, LL.D., 

President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas No. 2, 

Professor of the Institutes of Law 

IN THE University of Pennsylvania, 

etc., etc. 



My dear Hare : 

I was chosen a teacher of History in the University 
chiefly because you and another friend (of whom, alas ! 
only the precious memory is now left us) expressed 
confidence in my capacity to perform the duties of that 
position. During the many years I held the office, I 
was not unmindful that you had been in some sort my 
sponsor; and, now that I have laid it down, I am 
prompted by a grateful remembrance of your unfailing 
kindness, and our long-unbroken friendship, to dedicate 
this book to you. It may interest you, for it contains 
some of the results of the work which you did so much 
to impose upon me. 

With the highest regard, 

Faithfully yours, 

C. J. STILLfi. 

January, 1882. 



PEEFAOE. 



My object in preparing these " Studies" has been to 
ilkistrate the life of the Middle Age by a sketch of some 
of its characteristic institutions. I have selected those 
prominent features in that life which it inherited from 
Eoman and Christian society before the extinction of the 
Western Empire in 476, and which were moulded and 
shaped after that event by the peculiar ideas and habits 
of the barbarian invaders. 

My experience as a teacher has convinced me that to 
the genuine student the unbroken continuity of history 
is its most attractive and instructive feature, and that so 
far as the Middle Age is concerned the most important 
lesson which its history teaches us is that, while it was 
mainly the outgrowth of a previous condition, it was 
also the source of much that is most valuable in our 
modern life and civilization. 

These " Studies" are based upon a course of lectures 
— one of a series — which it became my duty to give 
in the University. They formed part of a scheme of 
systematic instruction in history in which my design 
was to indicate the " general stream of tendency" of 
historical events in Europe during the Christian era. 



vi PREFACE. 



I have been requested by my old pupils to publish 
these lectures. Before doing so, however, I have thought 
it best to remodel and, to a certain extent, to rewrite 
them, so as to give them the form of general " studies" 
on the subject. 

I may add that some knowledge of historical geog- 
raphy is very necessary to a full understanding of many 
of the questions which I have discussed in the following 
pages. The recent work of Mr. Freeman on this sub- 
ject, and especially the maps appended to it, or the his- 
torical atlases of Yon Spruner or of Labberton, will 
be found very useful for that purpose. 

In the Appendix will be found a list of the principal 
authorities which I have consulted in preparing this 
work. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



A SECOND edition of this book having been called 
for, the text has been revised and corrected, the Index 
enlarged, and various other changes have been made. 

It is a cause of sincere satisfaction to the author to 
find tliat his work has proved useful to those for whom 
it was specially designed — that large and increasing 
class, both in our colleges and outside of them, who are 
pursuing advanced studies in history, and who are par- 
ticularly desirous of acquainting themselves with the 
results of the latest investigations concerning the some- 
what unfamiliar features of the life of the Middle Age. 

May, 1883. 



00]^TEE"TS. 



CHAPTER I. 



GENERAL CHAEACTERISTICS OF THE MEDIEVAL ERA. 



The Importance of Middle Age History 

Eoman Elements therein, and their Assimilation . 

The Characteristics of the Barbarians . 

Their Permanent Occupation of the Koman Territory 

Contrast between Koman and Christian Ideas 

Early Church Organization 

Organization of the Imperial Government . 
Eoman Eule in the Provinces .... 
Superscription of Pilate 



PAGE 

13 
16 
20 
23 
26 
28 
33 
37 
89 



CHAPTER II. 



THE BARBARIANS AND THEIR INVASIONS. 

Conflict of Eoman and Teutonic Ideas . 
Characteristics of the Invaders 
Nature of the Invasions of the Empire 
The Barbarian Ideas brought into its Life 
Growing Power of the Church 
Suppression of Arianism in the "West . 
Conquests of the Franks, and Baptism of Clovis 
Eelations of the Church to the Prankish Kings 
Conversion of the Northern Tribes 



41 
42 

50 
53 
55 

57 
58 
68 
65 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE FRANKISH CONQUESTS AND CHARLEMAGNE. 

PAGE 

Boundaries of the Prankish Kingdom ..... 71 

The Merovingians 73 

The Family of Charlemagne 75 

The Popes and the Franks 79 

Coronation of Charlemagne, and the Theory of the Holy 

Eoman Empire ........ 82 

Charlemagne's Conquests ....... 85 

His Characteristics as a Conqueror, Legislator, and Patron 

of Learning ......... 87 

The Charlemagne of History and of Legend ... 94 

Failure of his Schemes 95 



CHAPTER IV. 



MOHAMMED AND HIS SYSTEM. 



Mohammedanism as a Force in Mediasval History 
The Arab Tribes — their Religion and Commerce . 
"Weakness of the Empit-e in the Time of Mohammed 
Christian and Heretical Sects 
Decay of Discipline in the Roman Army 
Mohammed's Early Life and Doctrines 
The Conversion of the Arab Tribes 
The Theory of Armed Propagandism . 
Conquests of the Saracens 



98 
103 
107 
109 
111 
113 
119 
121 
125 



CHAPTER V. 

MEDIEVAL FRANCE. 



The Degeneracy of the Descendants of Charlemagne . .130 
The Treaty of Partition at Verdun 133 



CONTENTS. 



XI 



PAGE 

The Characteristics of the Feudal System .... 135 

Invasion of the Northmen ....... 145 

Services of the Family of Capet ...... 146 

Hugh Capet elected King of France ..... 147 

English Kings Feudal Lords in France .... 149 

The Freedom of the Towns 151 

Feudalism during the Hundred-Years' War . . .153 

The Work of Jeanne d'Arc 155 

Absorption of Fiefs, and their Annexation to the Crown . 157 



CHAPTEE VI. 



GERMANY, FEUDAL AND IMPERIAL. 

Different Results of Feudalism in France and Germany . 160 
Extinction of the Descendants of Charlemagne . . . 161 
The Six Principal Duchies at that Time . . . .161 
Henry of Saxony chosen King — his Work .... 163 
The Influence of Towns on German Life .... 167 
Three Dynasties of Kings and Roman Emperors . . 164 

Relations of the Emperors to the Popes . . . .170 
Henry IV. and Hildebrand — Investitures .... 177 
Hohenstauffen Emperors and the Lombard League . .179 

Italian Politics the Ruin of Germany 181 

Rudolph of Hapsburg and his Dynasty .... 181 
The Results of Decentralization 187 



CHAPTER VIL 

SAXON AND DANISH ENGLAND. 



Historical Basis of English Life 189 

American Interest in English History . . . . .191 

Roman Occupation of the Country 193 

The Anglo-Saxons, and their Characteristics in Germany . 199 



Xll 



CONTENTS. 



The Anglo-Saxon Classes and Organization . 
Danish Invasions, and Subsequent Fusion of Kaces 
Christianity and the Church in England 
Kelations of the Church to the Monarch — Dunstan 



PAGE 

208 
207 
211 
215 



CHAPTER VIII. 



ENGLAND AFTER THE NOEMAN CONQUEST 

The National Life as affected in Four Different "Ways . 
The Feudal System as established by the Conqueror . 

Eule of the Norman Kings 

King John — Magna Charta 

Simon de Montfort and the House of Commons . 
Policy of the Norman Kings towards the Church 
Discontent in England in the Fourteenth Century 
The Hundred- Years' "War in France .... 
Anglo-Norman Life in England ..... 

The Towns and the Gildes 

Condition of the People, and the Labor Question 
Powers of the House of Commons .... 



217 
219 
221 
223 
227 
229 
233 
235 
237 
239 
241 
245 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE PAPACY TO THE EEIGN OF CHAHLEMAGNE. 



The Nature of the Papal Eule 
Church Organization and its Growth 
The Supremacy of Rome 
The Popes during the Invasions . 
The Theory of the Church's Power 
Greatness of the Early Popes 
The Church's Visibility and Unity 
Mediaeval Bishops and the Popes . 
Cosmopolitan Spirit of the Papacy 



251 
253 
257 
261 
264 
267 
271 
273 
274 



CONTENTS. 



xiu 



CHAPTEE X. 

THE PAPACY AND THE EMPIRE. 

PAGE 

Theory of the World-Monarchy and the World-Eeligion . 277 

Charlemagne's Relations to the Pope 280 

Hildebrand and his Theocratic Ideas 283 

Simony and the Marriage of the Clergy . . • -286 

The War of the Investitures 288 

Eelative Position of Henry IV. and Gregory VII. . . 289 

Claims of the Later Medi?eval Popes 29-i 

" The Babylonian Captivity," and the Great Schism . . 299 

The Council of Constance ^^^ 

The Popes as Italian Princes ^^^ 

CHAPTEE XI. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR ITALIAN NATIONALITY. 

The Sentiment of Nationality in the Teutonic Eaces 

Italy the Special Prey of the Invaders . 

The Lombard Invasion and the Popes . 

The Prankish Conquest and its Effect . 

The Lombard League— Guelphs and Ghibelines 

Frederick II. and the Popes .... 

The City Eepublics and their Prosperity 

The Tyrants of the Towns— Condottieri 

Tyranny and Culture combined in the Italian Prince 

Italian Dynasties at the Close of the Pifteenth Century 



305 
309 
311 
313 
315 
317 
319 
323 
329 
331 



CHAPTEE XIL 

MONASTICISM, CHIVALRY, AND THE CRUSADES. 



Indirect Influences in History 
Else and Growth of Monasticism . 



333 
335 



xiv CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

St. Benedict and the Order of Benedictines . . . .337 

St. Bernard and his Work 340 

St. Dominic and the Order of Friar Preachers . . .342 
St. Francis and the Order of Minorites or Franciscans . . 344 

Chivalry and the Mediaeval Knight 347 

How the Church trained him for her Service . . . 348 

The Point of Honor 351 

The Crusades .......... 353 

The War against the Albigenses 355 

The Crusaders in Spain 357 



CHAPTER XIII. 

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY — THE SCHOOLMEN — UNIVERSITIES. 

The Imperial Methods of Education adopted by the Church 3G1 

Cathedral and Monastic Schools 303 

Alcuin and the Palace School of Charlemagne . . . 364 

Influence of the Palace School 367 

The Scholastic Philosophy and the Schoolmen . . . 370 

Controversy about Universals — Nominalists and Eealists . 374 

The University of Paris and its Organization . . . 376 

The University of Bologna— Civil and Canon Law . . 380 

The Study of Medicine 383 

The Effect of Physical Investigations 384 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE LABORING CLASSES IN THE MIDDLE AGE. 

The Industrial Classes in Antiquity and in Modern Times . 385 

The Source of the Contempt for Labor in Antiquity . . 387 

Tlie Mechanic Arts and Trade in the Koman Empire . . 388 

Collegia— Conflict between Free and Slave Labor . . 390 

The First Effect of the Invasions on the Laboring Class . 391 



CONTENTS. 



XV 



Causes of the Gradual Abolition of Villenage 

Effect of Fixed Services 

The Laboring Class in the Free Towns— Trade Corporations 
Organization of the Glides or Confreries .... 
The Exactions after the Freedom from Feudal Service 
Contrast between the History of England and that of France 
with reference to the Labor Question . . . . 



PAGE 

393 
395 
397 
400 

408 

409 



CHAPTEE XV. 



MEDIAEVAL COMMERCE. 

Movement characteristic of Civilization 

Difference between Oriental and European Civilization 

Isolation of the Middle Age— Causes and Kesults 

Koman Commerce, and its Influence on Roman Life 

Commercial History of Italian Towns . 

Commerce and the Crusades .... 

The Hanseatic League 

Humanizing Influences of Mediaeval Commerce 
Commerce and the Church .... 
Else of International Eelations due to Commerce 



412 
415 
417 
419 
424 
427 
429 
435 
436 
439 



CHAPTEE XVL 



THE ERA OF SECULARIZATION. 

Conflict between Authority and Individualism 
Nature and Extent of the Church Authority 
The Nation and the Church .... 
National Ideas supplant Ecclesiastical. . 
Position of the Popes in the Later Middle Age 
Increase of "Worldliness and Luxurious Living 
Inventions and Maritime Discoveries . 



441 
443 
445 
447 
451 
453 
457 



XVI 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Commercial Interests and National Policy .... 459 
Popular Discontents 461 

Appendix 465 

Index . 469 



MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 



CHAPTER I. 

GENERAL CHAEACTERISTICS OF THE MEDIEVAL ERA. 

That period of the world's history embraced be- 
tween the date of the downfall of the Western Roman 
Empire in 476 and the conquest of Constantinople by 
the Ottoman Turks in 1453 is commonly known as 
medieval or Middle Age history. It is so called, 
doubtless, because it is supposed to occupy the inter- 
mediate space, at least in Western Europe, between 
ancient and modern history, and because it marks the 
period of transition from the one to the other. This 
period may be studied either as a most curious and in- 
teresting epoch in the world's history, in itself wholly 
unlike that of any age which preceded or followed it, 
or we may investigate it as the true groundwork of 
modern history, regarding a knowledge of its teachings 
as an essential introduction to a correct understanding 
of the great principles which underlie our modern civ- 
ilization. The Middle Age was both a period of transi- 
tion and of a formative process, when the forces which 

govern our modern life were slowly crystallizing. For 

2 13 



14 MEDL^VAL HISTORY. 

students of the general principles of modern history 
the cliief interest in the history of the Middle Age lies 
in its being what may be called seed-time, or the stage 
of the early development of those ideas of religion, 
government, society, laws, and manners the full fruition 
and bloom of which we witness in our own days. What 
such students desire chiefly to know about it is not so 
much what was curious or picturesque and specially 
characteristic of life as it was then lived in Western 
Europe, as what there was permanent in it, and how it 
was inwoven in the framework of modern life, thus 
forming an act of that great drama of human history in 
which retribution is the law, 023inion the chief mould- 
ing agency, and the advancement of the human race the 
denouement and final result. We propose here to study 
the Middle Age, not as antiquarians, but as historians, — 
in other words, with reference to the influence of its life 
upon that of succeeding ages. 

If we begin to study mediaeval history with this 
object, we soon discover that we cannot understand the 
nature and historical character of its peculiar develop- 
ment until we trace the beginnings of its history back 
to sources beyond the period which I have assigned to 
the beginning of mediaeval history proper, — that is, 
the extinction of the Western Eoman Empire in 476. 
These sources we shall find in the characteristic life of 
the barbarians in their native forests, and in the laws, 
religion, and government of Imperial Rome, not only 
while she was mistress of the world, but also during 



GENERAL ASPECT OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 15 

that long period of decline and decay in which the op- 
posing forces of Christianity and barbarism were slowly 
changing her life and moulding her system for its new 
destinies, preparing her to rule the world by her laws, 
as she had once done by her arms. The general view 
of the Middle Age would be that of a stream fed from 
distant sources, at first a torrent, bursting from the 
forests of Germany, sweeping onward, so violent in its 
fury and so overwhelming in its force as for a time to 
destroy all trace of the work of civilized man, and then, 
long after, reappearing, swollen by its tributaries, as a 
mighty river, bearing upon its placid and ample bosom 
blessings of peace and comfort to those who dwell upon 
its shores. 

Again, the general aspect of Europe during the Middle 
Age is that of a violent conflict, a struggle, not merely 
between the barbarian tribes and the legions of Impe- 
rial Rome, and of these tribes with each other, but also 
a constant struggle of opposing ideas for the mastery, of 
the Teuton against the Eoman, of the North of Europe 
against the South, of Christianity against heathenism, 
of a savagery which has been compared to that of the 
North American Indians with the highest form of civili- 
zation then known to the world. In the midst of such 
terrible birth-throes modern civilization is brought into 
the world, and, unlike any other civilization in history, 
it owes its peculiarities and its characteristic strength 
to this violent conflict of opposing forces of which it is 
the resultant. 



-[6 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

All this will appear more fully as we study the special 
development of the mediaeval history. What we must 
first do is to consider the forces which thus struggled 
for the mastery, examine their nature and relative 
strength, their origin and historical development, and 
then we can better describe their conflict and final 
fusion with each other. These forces, for our purpose, 
may be considered as derived from two sources, Roman 
and barbarian life. 

The four most powerful and active elements of me- 
diaeval society which were derived directly from the 
Roman civilization are — 1, organized Christianity, or 
the Church; 2, the Roman organization and adminis- 
tration ; 3, the Roman civil law as it relates to the 
rights of persons and property ; 4, the general use of 
the Latin language. These are some of the seeds which 
Rome sowed in mediaeval soil, and which have brought 
forth fruit abundantly ever since, both for good and for 
evil. To estimate the nature of the seed aright, we 
must first trace the history of its growth on Roman 
soil. This process will carry us in our search for the 
beginnings of mediaeval history much farther back, as 
I have said, than the period of the downfall of the 
Western Empire in 476. We must, for instance, if 
we wish to comprehend the nature of the paramount 
influence of Christianity in the history of the Middle 
Age, study the reign of Constantine (306-337), when 
what had been previously only the proscribed creed of 
a few obscure fishermen became a powerful organization 



PECULIAR INFLUENCES OF ROME. 17 



in the Empire, the official religion of the Roman world, 
and its clergy shared in the power and majesty wielded 
by the Imperial Caesar. 

In the age of Constantine, too, the theory of Roman 
civil organization and government had reached its 
fullest development. The long peace which resulted 
from the adhesion by the Antonines to the policy of 
Augustus of refusing to extend the boundaries of the 
Empire, and which had been interrupted only by the 
successful efforts of his successors to repel the first in- 
vasions of the barbarians, had been favorable to the full 
development of what was characteristic in the Roman 
system of government. We must, at the outset of the 
inquiry, disabuse ourselves of the impression, which 
is a very natural one, that only what was good in \\\q 
Roman system survived and helped the progress of 
civilization in succeeding ages. That portion of Ro- 
man history which fills the space between the reign 
of the Emperor Constantine and the downfall of the 
Empire in 476 is, as far as the preservation of the 
Roman Imperial system itself is concerned, a record 
of constantly progressive decay, feebleness, and corrup- 
tion, ending finally in the absolute exhaustion of the 
Empire ; and yet this very period is the one most fruit- 
ful in those influences which, in later ages and under 
different surroundings, have been most potent in shaping 
the course of history. Republican Rome had little to 
do, either by precept or example, with the modern life 
of Europe, Imperial Rome everything. The Middle 



18 MEDIJEVAL HISTORY. 

Age was built on its ruins. What then was there in 
this mighty system, from the time of the Emperor 
Constantine until its organization was destroyed by the 
permanent occupation of the soil by the barbarians, 
which has left so ineffaceable a mark upon the history 
of mediaeval and modern Europe? What were the 
boundaries of the Empire, what was the character of 
its population, and what was its governing policy, w^ien 
its power began to crumble before the fierce assaults of 
the barbarian tribes ? 

The limits of the Eqman Empire in Europe were 
bounded, as is well known, by the course of the great 
rivers the Rhine and the Danube. This frontier had 
been deliberately settled upon by the far-seeing policy 
of Augustus and of Trajan. The policy which estab- 
lished it was only the expression of a sentiment uni- 
versal among Roman statesmen at all times, — that the 
only real danger to the perpetuity of the Empire was 
the possibility of the invasion of its territory by the 
wild tribes on the other side of these rivers. They 
were regarded, naturally, as the most formidable bar- 
riers which could be interposed against such invasions. 
Eor nearly five hundred years this frontier, guarded 
by the larger portion of the military force of the 
Empire, served to preserve its territory, if not always 
from invasion, at least from permanent occupation, 
while the provinces on the Roman side of this frontier 
were carrying out, in entire unconsciousness of danger, 
to its fullest development, whatever was good or evil 



SYMPTOMS OF DECA V. 19 



ill the Roman Imperial system. The popuhition of the 
provinces capable of military dnty was diminishing 
year by year ; slavery had destroyed all development of 
trade and commerce and the means of recruiting the 
armies; the soil was cultivated by slaves only, and 
brought forth little ; latifundia, or sheep pastures, took 
the place of f\irms cultivated by free laborers; the 
exactions of the tax-gatherers for Imperial purposes 
became each year more severe and oppressive, and the 
result was not merely the decay of industry, but a con- 
stantly decreasing population, while the soil no longer 
produced enough to nourish it in full vigor. 

From these and a variety of similar causes it is evi- 
dent that the canker-worm was at the root of Roman 
society ; and yet the rulers of the Empire, heedless of 
the ruin that was threatening them at their own doors, 
could see no danger for the future, save in the black 
cloud which hung on the northeastern horizon. 

The Empire during all this time was never, to a super- 
ficial observer, more prosperous. The province of Gaul, 
for instance, separated from those who coveted its terri- 
tory and envied its civilization only by the river Rhine, 
was, during the first four centuries of the Christian era, 
in as flourishing a condition as any portion of the Empire. 
The highly elaborate administration of the Roman law 
was everywhere in full vigor in the three Gauls, and its 
system of organization was so well adapted to its ends 
that it worked as smoothly among the wild Celts whom 
Cffisar had subdued as if it had governed a province 



20 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

at the gates of Kome. The country was filled with 
flourishing cities (not less than one hundred and sixteen 
in number from the river Scheldt to the Mediterranean), 
— not merely military posts on the frontier, like Treves 
[Augusta Trevirorwn), Cologne (Colonia A gi^jjjyina), and 
Coblentz, for instance, but cities such as Bordeaux, 
Toulouse, Marseilles, Lyons, Vienne, Aries, Nlmes, and 
many others, in which everything was distinctively 
Koman, not merely the baths and amphitheatres, works 
of art and palaces, with all the appliances of luxury, but 
those true monuments of Roman civilization which we 
find wherever the Komans penetrated, — roads and aque- 
ducts, and schools of rhetoric and eloquence. During 
all this time the Roman and the Gaul were becoming 
gradually fused together, and before the invasion of the 
German tribes Roman religion, Roman law, the Roman 
language, and Roman oppression and corruption were 
as characteristic of life in Gaul as they were of that in 
Italy. 

It is impossible to imagine any two conditions of 
civil life more opposite than that of the Roman Empire 
and that of the Teutonic tribes on the other side of the 
Rhine and the Danube previous to the invasion. Before 
pointing out these characteristic differences and the 
points at which the fusion at last took place, it may ])e 
well to give a chronological sketch of the invasions. 

The barbarians, as they were called by the Romans, 
and as they proudly called themselves, were moved in 
their invasions by two impulses. Not only were they 



FIRST WA VE OF INVASION. 21 



tempted to cross the Roman frontier by their covetous 
desire for the riches of the provincials, whose growino* 
weakness they despised, but they were, in a sense, forced 
to do so from motives of self-preservation, for they were 
pushed onward by tribes in their rear still more warlike 
and savage than themselves. There were at least three 
successive waves of immigration moving at the same 
time towards the Eoman frontier, — 1st, the Teutonic; 
2d, the Slavonian; and 3d, the Huns, or Mongols, — 
and the Roman Empire was to feel, before its downfall 
in the West, the shock of each of these successive 
waves. 

Before the accession of Constantine, the first had swept 
over certain portions of the Empire, but Rome had 
strength yet left to check these irruptions and to drive 
back the invaders,— the Goths, the Alemanni, the Franks, 
and the Burgundians, — not, however, before they had 
marked their path by the destruction of the monuments 
of Roman civilization in Gaul, and had plundered the 
unfortunate provincials without mercy. It is interestino* 
to observe how general was the alarm occasioned by these 
first invasions, which in the end w^ere, as I have said, 
successfully repelled; how constant was the endeavor of 
such rulers as Diocletian, Constantine, Julian, and Theo- 
dosius, by various expedients, to keep the barbarians 
out of the territory of the Empire. Whatever else 
failed, the spirit of resistance to barbarian inroads never 
yielded. Sometimes the rulers resisted and beat back 
the invaders, sometimes bought them off, sometimes 



22 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

took them into the military service of the Empire, 
sometimes tried to educate them or to incorporate them 
within their territory as recognized allies. But all these 
expedients, adopted and carried out by rulers of strong 
and commanding character, failed to avert what seemed 
to be the irresistible course of destiny. Nothing can 
prove more clearly how much strength and how much 
consciousness of the dignity of their position as guar- 
dians of civilization were left in the Romans, even in 
those days which we have been taught to regard only as 
periods of decline and decay, than these mighty and per- 
sistent eiforts to guard the soil of the Empire from the 
pollution of invasion. And certainly it seems to me that 
there is nothing in Koman history grander than the spirit 
which led all the Emperors, from Constantine to Theo- 
dosius, to concentrate all the resources of the Empire for 
the accomplishment of this great object. But " the stars 
in their courses fought against Sisera.^' What the result 
might have been had the Teutonic tribes been kept be- 
yond the limits of the Empire, and, therefore, out of 
contact with Roman civilization, we cannot say. But 
this much is certain, that if these races had never crossed 
the Rhine and the Danube, and had been left to evolve 
a civilization from the unmixed elements of their own 
life, the great characteristics of modern Europe, the sen- 
timent of nationalities, and Christianity organized as we 
know it, would not have existed. 

The permanent occupation of the Roman territory 
began in a.d. 395, with the Yisigoths, on the death of 



INVASION OF THE VISIGOTHS. 



the great Emperor Theoclosius, and that division of the 
Empire between liis sons Arcadius and Honorius which 
gave to the first the Eastern and to the other the Western 
provinces. This arrangement was doubtless made by the 
great Emperor with the hope that the inroads of the 
barbarians might be thus more eifectually checked ; but it 
seems in the end only to have hastened the catastrophe. 
Tliese Visigoths had taken refuge in the Roman territory 
south of the Danube from the threatened advance of 
the Huns. They were permitted to enter the army of 
the Empire, and upon the death of Theodosius they 
revolted, and Alaric, their chief, set about carving out 
a kingdom for himself within the Roman territory. 
With this object in view, he took possession of Thes- 
saly and of Greece, and marched through the Illyrian 
provinces towards Italy. He w-as at first defeated by 
Stilicho, the Vandal commander-in-chief of the Roman 
armies ; but he again advanced, and, after three sieges 
of Rome, he conquered the Imperial City in 410, which 
then fell (for the first time since the invasion of Brennus, 
the Gallic chieftain, seven hundred years before) into the 
power of the barbarians. Meantime, other tribes, — the 
Burgundians, the Suevi, and the Alani, — stimulated by 
the example of Alaric, poured down upon the plains of 
Italy. Their advance was checked by the skill and the 
courage of this same Vandal, Stilicho, and they were in- 
duced to leave Italy and occupy the territory of the Em- 
pire in Gaul and Spain, — the Burgundians the lands 
bounded by the Mediterranean, the Rhine, and the 



24 MEDIyEVAL HISTORY. 

Saone, and the Saevi and the Vandals ancient Aqui- 
taine south of the Loire, and the whole of the Spanish 
Peninsula. There they remained until the Visigoths, 
under the successors of Alaric, tired of Italy, took pos- 
session, first, of the country between the Loire and the 
Ebro, and finally, after the departure of the Vandals 
for Africa, of the remainder of what is now called 
Spain. About the same time the Imperial authority 
ceased to exist in Britain, nearly all the legions having 
been withdrawn by Honorius to aid in the defence of 
Italy, while those who remained mutinied and set up an 
Emperor of their own. Thus in about forty-five years 
(395-440) the fairest portion of that great Empire 
which had ruled the world for more than four hun- 
dred years, and which had more than a thousand years 
of growth, — Italy, the largest portion of Gaul, Britain, 
Spain, and Africa, — fell, with the Imperial City itself, 
into the hands of the despoilers. Surely history has no 
more impressive lesson of the vanity of human hopes. 
But the work of the destroying angel was not yet 
completed. A small portion of Gaul still remained 
under the Roman power, and the new conquerors of 
the remainder were not to be left in quiet possession of 
their spoil. Attila, the chief of the Huns, or Tartars, 
with his vast hordes, invaded Germany and Gaul in 450, 
mainly, doubtless, with the object of 2>lunder; but his 
defeat by the Komans and the Visigoths at the battle 
of Chalons, in 451, and his subsequent premature death, 
no doubt preserved Western Europe from the permanent 



OTHER INVADING TRIBES. 25 

influence of a very large Tartar element. This, and the 
battle of Tours, in 732, where Charles Martel defeated 
the Saracens advancing from Spain, must be regarded 
as among the most decisive battles in history, for they 
defeated the design of those who were striving to extir- 
pate or defile Christianity in AYestern Europe. Even 
after the defeat of Attila (451) some remnant of the 
Roman authority was still left in Gaul and Italy. But 
the most powerful of all the barbarian tribes, the Franks, 
whose original seat was in modern Holland and Bel- 
gium, burst with fury into the northern portions of 
Gaul, and defeated, under their chief Clovis, in 486, 
the Roman governor, and in a few years after, the 
Alemanni, the Burgundians, and the Visigoths, thus 
establishing a Frankish kingdom, embracing a territory 
including all Roman Gaul between the Alps, the Pyr- 
enees, the Rhine, and the ocean, and destroying the 
last vestige of Roman power north of the Alps. The 
Vandals were already in possession of Africa, and had 
given several times nominal Emperors to Italy. The 
weakness and the beauty of that land tempted shortly 
afterwards another fierce horde of Teuton warriors, 
called Lombards, to assail it, and the last remnant of 
the once mighty empire of Rome was ruled for two 
hundred years by them, and until they were in turn 
subdued by the all-conquering Franks. 

I have given merely a sketch of the invasion and 
occupation of the Roman territory by the barbarians, 
reserving what I have to say of the history, institutions, 



26 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 



and manners of tliese tribes, and tlieir relations with 
tlie Roman civilization, for another chapter. AVhat 
concerns as now is to know what there was left amidst 
the general wreck of the Empire which was capable of 
acting upon the invaders with such a persistent and con- 
trolling power as to completely change the current of 
the history of the world, — in short, what were the ideas 
of the Romans which in the end conquered those bar- 
barians whom their arms had foiled to subdue. I must 
confine myself to tliose permanent Roman influences 
w^hich contributed most directly to this result. This in- 
quiry will lead me necessarily to say something concerning 
the history in the Empire of that most potent of all ibrces 
in human affairs since it first began to move the world, 
viz., Christianity. Before the barbarians permanently 
occupied the Roman territory, this force had, in the 
Empire, gone through different stages of control over its 
life, from that of a mere moral power or influence to 
that of a thoroughly organized and powerful hierarchy. 
It was the moral ideas which form the basis of Chris- 
tianity, as they were preached, before the close of the 
second century, in every province of the Empire, which 
won converts. Disbelief and materialism were the char- 
acteristics of the educated class of Roman society ; help- 
lessness, hopelessness, and suffering, of the poorer. In 
Rome, the city, the republic, and afterwards the Em- 
l)eror, were the real divinities. Religion there w^as an 
affair of state, and worship was maintained by a highly 
aristocratic class as its peculiar and exclusive function. 



ROMAN IDEAS OF RELIGION. 27 



There was no proselytism at Rome, because, unlike tlie 
civil government, its religion never exacted universal 
'obedience. To the Romans, religion was an affair of 
each country, and differing religions were tolerated 
within their bounds on that principle. While the com- 
paratively easy means of communication between the 
more distant parts of the Emj^ire helped the propagation 
of Christianity, still everything in the Roman funda- 
mental conception of religious ideas was hostile to Chris- 
tianity, as a catholic or cosmopolitan form of worship; 
and yet, strange paradox ! it was by an adaptation of 
the Roman system of administration that the Church 
became in the end the most powerful of all organizations. 
To the Roman, educated in these traditional ideas 
of religion, the dogmas of Christianity, Avhich claimed 
a divine sanction, may not have been very attractive, 
but the precepts, tlie practical duties, and especially the 
promises of the new system won the hearts and excited 
the enthusiasm at least of the })oor and suffering. To 
such persons the doctrines of the equality of all men in 
the sight of God, of fraternity founded upon a common 
redemption, the promise of a future life of happiness, \\\q. 
certainty of a day of judgment, and the near approach 
of the end of the world, — all this was, indeed, the gospel 
of consolation ; and no wonder, speaking of human 
means only, that such a gospel was eagerly embraced 
by many. Of course, the idea of some plan of govern- 
ment or organization is inseparable from that of any 
religious system. Like other systems, the organization 



28 MEDLEVAL HISTORY. 

of Christianity, when it was a voluntary society, seems 
to have been popukir at first, — so far, at least, that it 
committed, to a considerable extent, the control of the 
election of the bishops or overseers in each town to the 
faithful, clerical and lay. Whatever may have been the 
early organization of the Christian Church, many of 
those moral duties which we recognize as based upon 
fundamental Christian ideas had become familiar not 
merely in Roman practice, but had been introduced into 
the Roman civil law, long before the reign of Con- 
stantine. It is not easy to trace clearly to the direct 
power of Christianity the origin of the more humane 
and cnliirhtened views of moral rights and duties which 
became conspicuous in Roman practice, if not in Roman 
law, during the first three centuries. Still, it is impos- 
sible to believe that such changes in their moral concep- 
tions could have taken place without its indirect influence 
at least. The greater sacredness of marriage, the punish- 
ment of infanticide, the suppression of the cruel gladi- 
atorial shows, the mitigation of the evils of slavery 
by the consecration of the servile virtues, the urgent 
advocacy of the manumission of slaves, the redemption 
of captives, the organized plans for succoring the poor 
and afflicted, — all these things, and many others, which 
may be comprehended under the general na?me of char- 
ity, became conspicuous in the Roman world just in 
proportion as the warm blood of Ciu'istian life was 
poured into it. In every form of creed or change of 
doctrine which took place in the history of the Christian 



CHURCH ORGANIZATION. 29 

Church it is well to remember that the one unclianged 
thing' was the place occupied by these virtues in the 
Christian system. Nothing is more remarkable than 
that even among the rude barbarians, who looked with 
contempt upon weakness of any kind, and therefore 
despised qualities such as these, their gentle power won 
at last its way, and formed, under the fostering care 
of the Church, one of the most characteristic features 
of mediaeval Christianity. 

Let us consider now the manner in which the wliolc 
Cliristian system, both the practical duties it enforced 
and the doctrines which it taught, were propagated, or 
rather were made ready for infusion into tlie life of the 
barbarian tribes when they sliould come into contact 
with that Roman civilization of which organized Clu'is- 
tianity formed so })rominent a part. Apparently there 
was in it little likely to combine with anything then 
known of the j)eculiarities of these tribes. 

I have already spoken of the primitive organization 
of the Church, and" of the bishops, in one sense, as 
popular magistrates, as they were elected by the faithful. 
There were frequent meetings of councils of presbyters, 
presided over by the bishop, without whose advice and 
consent no changes of importance, even in matters of 
discipline, Vere undertaken. Out of this soon grew a 
hierarchy, in which the episcopal office was greatly mag- 
nified and the popular element lessened, metropolitans 
assuming authority over the bishops of a province, until 

at last the patriarchate of Rome, as the most important 

3* 



30 MEDL-EVAL HISTORY. 

See, if not in the wliole world, certainly in the AYestern 
Empire, became recognized as entitled to tlie primacy, 
and afterwards to what is called the papacy. Long be- 
fore the legal establishment of Christianity as the State 
religion, this organization, excepting, of course, the power 
of the patriarchate and the papacy, existed in the whole 
Western Empire, more or less perfectly carried out as 
the cities were more or less distant from Rome. Before 
Constantine, not only had Christianity been preached in 
every province and in every large city of the Empire, 
but bishops throughout its whole extent, even when 
the Christians were a proscribed and persecuted sect, 
were collecting from the faithful large sums of money 
as alms for the necessities of the Church and of the 
poorer brethren, and were enforcing discipline among 
their disciples by means of the Church censures, pen- 
ance, and excommunication. So entirely had the sys- 
tem, even when it was a voluntary one, taken root -in 
the Roman heart and life. When Constantine made 
Christianity the official religion of the Empire, in 313, 
the eighteen hundred bishops who then ruled the Chris- 
tian world, as well as their clergy, were granted some 
extraordinary exemptions and privileges. They were 
freed from the obligation of service to the State, civil 
or military, and from the payment of all taxes; they 
were permitted to receive the donations and legacies of 
the faithful, which their zeal, stimulated by the example 
of the Emperor, made very abundant ; and the cogni- 
zance of offences committed by the clergy was withdrawn 



LEGISLATION OF CONSTANTLVE. 31 

from the ordinary tribunals and transferred to that of 
the bishops. The hiy judges were ordered to execute 
forthwith the decrees of the bishops, and the churches 
were made phices of refuge for criminals, where the pro- 
cess of the civil law could not reach them. 

In this legislation of Constantine regarding the 
Church, everything in the way of privilege seems in- 
consistent with the ancient Roman policy, to which 
nothing was more abhorrent than an imperium in im- 
perio ; but we cannot advance a step in mediseval history 
without discovering that this legislation is the soil out 
of which grew logically and naturally that Church or- 
ganization wdiich in so great a degree shaped the life of 
that age. The important inference to be dravv^n from 
this state of the relations of the early Church to the Em- 
pire is, that the powder of the Church as an organization 
was the most active principle of life in the Koman 
world, from Constantine to the fall of the Empire, — that 
it had, so to speak, absorbed that life, and therefore 
became the most powerful agency in moulding the char- 
acter of the barbarians when they came into contact 
with it. It is not too much to say that as the Empire 
lost unity and organization these grand characteristics 
of the Roman system of administration were transfused 
into the life of the Church, that body snatching the 
power from the hands of the dying Empire, and in its 
turn ruling the world by the same methods. Abundant 
illustration might be given of the truth of the state- 
ment that the Church had, within its sphere, become 



32 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

the inheritor of the traditions of the Imperial power. 
Perhaps there is no more striking proof of it than in 
wliat is called the penance of Theodosius. This hap- 
pened in 390, not a century after Christianity had re- 
ceived official recognition. The Emperor Theodosius, 
altliough one of the most orthodox of Emperors, was 
one of the most passionate of men. Incensed because the 
mob at Thessalonica had murdered one of his generals 
and a number of Roman soldiers, he took indiscrimi- 
nate vengeance on the town by a massacre of many 
thousands of its unarmed inhabitants. But, while the 
Emperor was absolute despot, it appears that there was a 
power within the Empire stronger than he. That power 
was then represented by one of the most illustrious men 
the Church ever produced, St. Ambrose, Archbishop of 
Milan. When Theodosius, residing in that city, desired 
to present himself in the church, to participate as a good 
Christian in the service and the sacraments, he was for- 
bidden by the archbishop to enter even its precincts until 
he had performed the penance imposed by the Church 
upon a man guilty of such a crime as the massacre at 
Thessalonica. In this transaction it is hard to say which 
excites our greatest wonder, the boldness and the courage 
of the priest who could thus defy the Emperor, or the 
assured position of the Church at that time, which made 
it necessary for the ruler of the world to obey its decrees 
without hesitation. So, take the famous scene of Leo 
the Great, Pope in 452, threatening the savage Attila 
— " the Scourge of God,'' as he was called — with the 



POWER OF THE CHURCH. 33 



vengeance of the Apostles Peter and Paul in case lie 
should dare to assail Rome, or the same Pope successfully 
pleading with that other savage, Genseric the Vandal, 
that he should spare in Rome those objects at least which 
were under the protection of the successor of the Prince 
of the Apostles. Nothing is more remarkable in the 
history of the Empire during the period in which the 
barbarian tribes were gradually becoming settled in the 
provinces than that, when the civil power decayed, and 
the armies of the Empire failed, another power, wielded 
by different hands and exercised under totally different 
sanctions, but based in a certain measure upon the Im- 
perial organization, not only became a substitute for it, 
but proved the only means of preserving order amidst 
the confusion produced by the irruption of these wild 
tribes. 

Another element of Roman life which produced most 
important results in mediaeval and modern history was 
the peculiar organization of the Empire as a system 
of government. Here, as in the organization of the 
Church, is the perpetual triumph of Rome. We can 
only refer to those portions of this complicated system 
which were in full vigor for nearly two hundred years 
before the fall of the AYestern Empire, and with the 
force of which, therefore, the invaders were brought 
more immediately into contact. The Roman govern- 
ment, at least from the time of Diocletian and Con- 
stantine, was a pure and absolute despotism. What- 
ever may have been the theorv as4o the proper methods 



3-1 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

of election, the Emperor really owed his office to the 
acclamation of the legions on his accession. He was 
addressed as 'Hhe Lord of the Universe," even if he was 
a Christian; the principle of his rule was " quod principi 
placuit vigorem legis habet/' and his real strength lay in 
the loyal devotion of the army. He was at the head 
of- a vast and thoroughly organized system of centrali- 
zation, and all the functionaries of the Empire were in 
the last resort responsible to him alone for their acts. 
His administration was based upon an elaborate system 
of law, which in many respects was so conformable to 
universal reason that it has formed the basis of the 
codes of some of the most enlightened nations of mod- 
ern times, — of France, for instance, and, indeed, of all 
Latinized Europe and its colonies in the New World. 

The Roman code was supposed to embody the his- 
torical policy of the Roman people in their legal relations 
Avith each other ; but they had taken no direct part in its 
formation, and could in no way alter or amend it. This 
power was wholly in tlie hands of the Emperor, who 
made and unmade the laws to suit his Imperial policy. 
Nothing is more striking, when we remember the jeal- 
ousy with which in the days of the republic the Roman 
citizens, in their comitia, or general assemblies, watched 
the proposal to enact new laws, than to find two such 
fundamental changes as the removal of the seat of gov- 
ernment from Rome to Constantinople and the substitu- 
tion of Christianity for paganism as the official religion of 
the Empire, effected, apparently, without open opposition 



ROMAN ORGANIZATION. 



and by a simple decree of Coiistantine. The power 
of taxation, too, was wholly in the hands of the Em- 
peror; and when we add to this his complete control 
over the population for the purpose of recruiting his 
armies, we find combined what have always been 
throughout history the most potent instruments of gov- 
ernment, the purse and the sword, and we may thus 
gain some true idea of the power of the military despot- 
ism of the Empire. With our modern views, such a 
system seems destructive of all the true ends of govern- 
ment. Not so thought the ancient world. To its con- 
temporaries the excellence of the system consisted in the 
perfection of its administrative organization. It worked 
well as a governing machine in this sense, that it had 
given to the Roman people greater peace and security, 
and for a longer time, than any government then known 
in history. The Eoman system had not only crushed 
out nationalities, but in its conception of universal sway 
the theory of separate nationalities was inadmissible. 
No one was ever willing to believe that Rome could die. 
To her own subjects the removal of the capital to Con- 
stantinople was a mere matter of convenience, which did 
not affect the principle of her life ; even the Christians, 
when Alaric had sacked the city whose limits had not 
been polluted by the presence of armed enemies for more 
than seven hundred years, could speak of this catas- 
trophe, through the words of St. Augustine, as the ven- 
geance of God on the crimes and corruptions and cruelties 
of pagan Rome; but' her organization, her method of 



36 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

administration, from which the Church was soon to 
borrow so much, were constant themes of wonder and 
admiration and imitation. The barbarian tribes, even 
Avhile they were destroying the monuments of ancient 
civilization, were, in one sense, conquered by them ; and 
they believed as sincerely as did the Imperialists and 
the Christians that the perpetuity of Roman law and 
Roman administration formed part of the eternal order 
of human affairs. This profound belief we shall see 
exhibited all through the mediaeval times. There was 
always a longing for the past, a dream of the restora- 
tion of Roman Imperial order as a cure for the con- 
fusion of the times, sometimes taking a more definite 
shape, as in the effort of Charlemagne, in the ninth 
century, to restore the Western Empire. Surely if 
any historical fact is well settled it is the universal 
supremacy of Rome. The force of her example was 
not spent in the rude mediaeval age, when the only 
preoccupation of thoughtful men was to find a refuge 
from the evils of barbarism, but it has been all- 
powerful in modern times. No one can study the 
history of France in the age of Louis XIV., or in 
that of the First Napoleon when he was ruler of the 
Continent of Europe, — the new Charlemagne, as he 
called himself, — without being satisfied that the systems 
of both these masters of state-craft were formed on the 
Roman model. And indeed we might say the same of 
all other systems which now govern the world which are 
called Imperial. The genius of Rome inspires them all. 



RULE OF THE PROVINCES. 37 

Some details of the forms of the provincial admin- 
istration under the later Emperors are essential here. 
Western Europe was divided into two prefectures, — 
that of Italy, including the Ulyrian districts east of 
the Adriatic, and Africa, and that of Gaul, embracing 
the three dioceses (then a purely civil and not an ec- 
clesiastical division) Gaul, Spain, and Britain. These 
dioceses were divided into provinces, of which in Gaul 
proper there were seventeen, with a governor at the 
head of each. These governors were the Emperor's 
immediate representatives, vested with his powers for 
the collection of taxes, the management of the public 
domain, the levy and regulation of troops for the army, 
and with the whole civil and criminal jurisdiction 
within the province. This system of government was 
somewhat modified or supplemented by the exercise of 
certain functions intrusted to the towns, or municijyia^ 
in the provinces. The original Roman system was 
that of a government by cities, known to its law as 
munlc'qyia, each municipium being entitled to certain 
privileges and exercising certain powers of local self- 
government. The Imperial policy was a policy of cen- 
tralization, and in a great measure diminished the im- 
portance and privileges of these municipia. Still, in 
the decline of the Empire they were important adjuncts 
in the administration of the government, not of their 
local affairs only, but of the general and Imperial sys- 
tem. Each municipium was administered by a body called 
tlie curia, and its members, chosen from the wealthier 

4 



38 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

inhabitants and possessing a hereditary right to office, 
were called curiales. These towns in all the provinces 
of the Empire had grown numerous and rich during 
tlie long peace. The principal business of the town 
councils, in the latter days of the Empire, was to col- 
lect tlie public taxes. Their members were personally 
responsible for the amount of the tax imposed if they 
failed to collect it from those by whom it was due, even 
for that levied upon lands which had been abandoned 
by theh' proprietors. Their position was simply that of 
agents of the Imperial treasury, and the office, as may 
readily be supposed, was rather in the nature of a bur- 
den than a place of profit. The compensation granted 
by the government to the curiales for thus making them 
universal tax-gatherers, or rather universal tax-payers, 
was exemption from torture and corporal punishment, 
whicli might be employed in the case of the other 
inliabitants. 

Such were some of the prominent characteristics of 
tlie Eoman organization when the Western Roman 
world was overrun by the Teutonic tribes. I have 
referred only to those which history shows us affected 
most powerfully the ideas and at last transformed the 
life of these barbarians. Christianity, organized after 
the Roman pattern, the Imperial administration, and 
the recollections of the greatness of Rome under this 
system were among the most powerful influences in pro- 
ducing such a result. Is it not strange that in this mass 
of moral putrefaction, as it has been called, should lie 



PILATE'S SUPERSCRIPTION. 39 

liiddeu the germ of our modern life? We must watch 
carefully its development and its surroundings through 
a long course of ages before we can understand how 
Divine Providence brought light out of such darkness. 

There is but one other "Roman influence aiding in the 
propagation of Eoman and especially of Christian ideas 
to which we can refer here, and that is the substitution 
of the use of the Latin for the native languages in the 
2)rovinces of the Empire during the latter days. One 
illustration must suffice. 

Let us recall the superscription which was placed by 
Pilate on the cross, notwithstanding the earnest protest 
of the Jewish rulers : ^^ This is Jesus the King of the 
Jews : and it was written in Hebrew, and Greek, and 
Latin." Li this inscription of Pilate there seems to be 
an unconscious prophecy of the future destiny of the 
world. From that cross, and through the channel of 
the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin civilizations, have radi- 
ated all the influences which have made modern life the 
precious inheritance it is. That cross Avas set up at the 
point of confluence of those three great civilizations of 
antiquity which have ever since profoundly affected the 
condition, public and private, of the people of Western 
Europe. The Hebraic monotheistic conception of the 
Deity, the Greek universal reason, and the Roman 
power, and especially its language, have been the great 
secondary means of the propagation in that portion of 
the world of Christian civilization. In the West, Ro- 
n^.an law, Roman Christianity, and Roman power went 



40 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

together into the most remote regions, and won their 
triumphs on the same fields, and by the use of the same 
Latin language. By means of this Latin language 
Roman civilization was presented to the minds of the 
barbarians as including many things outside the domain 
of force, and conquered them, when force failed, by ap- 
peals to their reason and their hearts. It was the Latin 
lano;uao;e in the service of the Church, and in the 
administration of the law of the Empire, which taught 
the barbarians in what the true power and glory of 
Rome and the perpetuity of her system consisted, and 
thus was made an important step in their preparation 
for the reception of that new civilization of which the 
Roman language was the vehicle, as the Roman organi- 
zation was the motive force. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE BARBARIANS AND THE INVASIONS. 

We are now to consider the hostile forces with which 
tliis proud Roman civilization came in contact during 
the invasion and conquest of the territory of the Empire 
by the German tribes. We are concerned here rather 
with the nature of those forces than with the history of 
the military occupation of the soil, and especially with 
the long struggle between the habits, manners, and moral 
sentiments of the barbarians and the totally opposite 
characteristics of Roman life and its result. When 
we reach this result, by studying the development of 
these forces and the gradual process by which they were 
brought into something like harmonious co-operation 
for the practical purposes of government, we shall know 
something of the groundwork of the true life of the 
Middle Age. We shall thus gain, too, some insight 
into the sources of modern civilization, which we can 
trace to this strange combination of the Roman and 
Teutonic elements. Such a combination is very rare in 
history. We find very few instances in the long list 
of conquests where the peculiar civilization of the con- 
querors and the conquered flourished side by side, and 
where that which was fittest in each survived and 
gradually coalesced. 

4* 41 



42 medijeval history. 

All the tribes which successively invaded and perma- 
nently occupied Western Europe were of the Teutonic 
race. They were many in number and in name, — 
Goths, Burgundians, Suevi, Alemanni, Vandals, Lom- 
bards, Franks, and Saxons, — but they were all of the 
same great race, and had the same origin in the great 
Aryan migration from Asia. Although, of course, they 
differed in many respects, yet in their fundamental ideas 
concerning government, religion, and manners, so far as 
they were guided by these ideas in their relations with 
the Romans, there was among them all a strong family 
likeness. At the time of the invasion, all these tribes, 
save the Franks and the Saxons, were nominally Chris- 
tian, — that is to say, they were Arians, — holding a form 
of belief from which most important results were to 
follow, as we shall see in their subsequent history. But, 
relatively to the Romans, all the tribes were equally bar- 
barous, and their barbarous peculiarities had the same 
root, and, as we shall see, were developed in each in 
pretty nearly the same manner after the invasion and 
conquest of the Empire. The country from which 
these tribes came may be roughly described as that 
portion of modern Europe lying north of the Danube 
and between the Rhine and the Vistula, the Scandi- 
navian Peninsula, and certain portions of Russia. Their 
normal condition was that of wanderers, as the Ger- 
mans called them, and the chief occupation of all the 
active and able-bodied among them was either hunting 
or war. The warriors, like the braves of the North 



MODES OF BARBARIAN LIFE. 43 

American Indians, despised industry and loved fighting. 
From the earliest period of lioman history the people 
in Italy lived in a perpetual apprehension (wliich sub- 
sequent events only too well justified) lest their country 
should be overrun by these ferocious savages. Tiie 
greatest danger, indeed, which, up to the time of its 
occurrence, had threatened the republic was the invasion 
of its territory by the Cimbri and the Teutones, who 
were driven back by Marius ; and Ctesar's conquest of 
Gaul, like Charlemagne's conquest of the Saxons, was 
prompted, no doubt, quite as much by a determination 
to extirpate the source of danger by subjugating the 
fierce tribes in that region as by a wish to extend the 
limits of the republic. 

These tribes for the most part lived originally in 
Germany, in what are called " village communities,'' 
the primitive Teutonic system, in which, while each 
homestead was the private property of the head of the 
family, and was ruled solely by him as 'paterjamilias, 
the cultivable land was the common property of all the 
families of the village or township, and was tilled by 
them. They were not crowded together in large towns, 
as the Romans were, — a peculiarity, as we shall see, 
of immense importance in subsequent European history. 
The villages w^ere combined into districts, which were 
governed by a chief called graj^ or count ; but in each 
district assemblies of representatives of the village were 
held frequently, and decided the most important ques- 
tions, both as to their home government and the warlike 



44 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

expeditions of the tribe. Larger confederations, made 
up of a greater number of tribes, were also formed on 
the same principle and with the same object. The 
people of these tribes consisted of nobles, lesser and 
greater, freemen, as they were called, all of whom took 
part in war and in the tribal assemblies, and slaves, 
concerning whom the distinction must be made that one 
portion of these so-called slaves were the peasants or 
serfs, adscrnpti glebae, and the other the true domestic 
slaves, most of them prisoners of war, between which 
classes the difference became gradually greater and more 
marked after the tribes had occupied for some time the 
Koman soil. We must confine ourselves, in our account 
of them, to those special characteristics which became 
afterwards prominent in their relations with the Romans. 
Their religious belief, of which some mention has 
been made, founded upon the Scandinavian mythology, 
was perhaps the best expression of the spirit which from 
the beginning animated these warlike races. Chris- 
tianity had at the period of the invasions, under the 
form of Arianism, supplanted, at least among the more 
Southern Gothic tribes, the worship of Odin and his 
fellow-divinities, and perhaps the difference in the out- 
ward forms of Christian worship, observable all through 
history, between the nations of Northern and Southern 
Europe, may be traced with some confidence to the in- 
fluence 'of this Scandinavian mythology. But the tribes 
who made the first serious assaults were Goths, and were 
Christians, even if they were called heretics. The earliest 



A R IAN ISM AMONG THE GOTHS. 45 



of all the missionaries among them was the celebrated 
Ulphilas (348-374), commonly called ''the Apostle of 
the Goths," who spent a large portion of his life among 
that portion of the great Gothic race ^A'hich inhabited 
what is now Southern Russia, engaged in the praise- 
worthy and successful endeavor to teach these barbarians 
literally their letters, translating the Bible into the 
written language he had formed, and striving to civilize 
them after the Roman pattern by imparting to them a 
knowledge of that form of Christianity which had been 
fashionable in Constantinople Mdien he was educated 
there. From the Goths the belief in Arian Christianity 
spread to the Suevi, to the Alani, and to the Burgun- 
dians, before they invaded the Empire. This conver- 
sion, nominal, if we may so regard it, of vast bodies 
of these fierce barbarians, who despised the weakness of 
the Romans and Avere preparing to invade the country 
whose national religion they had just adopted, seems a 
marvellous result of the zeal and labor of the apostle 
Ulphilas. How all this came about is an historical 
question of considerable obscurity. One thing seems 
very clear, however. Their conversion, as well as the 
extraordinary forbearance and even respect shown both 
by Alaric and Theodoric, Gothic kings, who were both 
Arians, towards the Catholic hierarchy in their invasion 
of Italy, are well-attested historical facts. Moreover, 
the toleration of the Catholic w^orship and belief in 
Gaul by the Arian chieftains after they had subdued 
that province, is conclusive that under the Arian system 



46 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

the barbarians had been successfully taught something 
of that charity and good will which, according to our 
ideas, but not to those of mediaeval times, are inseparable 
from true Christianity. 

Bui, whatever may have been the influence of Chris- 
tianity upon the Teutonic tribes up to the time of the 
invasion, it is certain that they continued to be war- 
riors, and warriors after the ancient manner of their 
own race. Now, with that race, while force w^as the 
means, courage, which taught them that the brave war- 
rior never died, but only changed his abode, w^as the 
inspirer of their life. With this object in view, death on 
the field of battle became the great end of life. Tlie 
Romans always looked upon them with astonishment, 
as they observed that they had overcome the most ter- 
rible of all fears, the fear of death. The young Roman 
when he reached what was called the virile age was in- 
vested with a toga, as a sign of his readiness to undertake 
the duties of a citizen ; the young German, on the con- 
trary, at the same age was armed, in the midst of the 
tribe, with a buckler and a javelin, and he had not per- 
fected his title to manhood or to rank as a warrior until 
he had killed at least one man in battle. Their Scandi- 
navian religion taught them the existence of a future 
state, and by some it has been thought that this belief 
paved the way to the reception of the Christian doctrine 
of the immortality of the soul; but when we remember 
that all persons not dying on the field of battle were 
excluded from the Vallialla, — the Scandinavian heaven. 



TEVTOMC TRAITS, 47 

— the inference seems somewliat strained. Accompany- 
ing this warlike temper, of which Christianity as taught 
them only changed the direction and the motive, the 
sentiments of a love of equality and of personal inde- 
pendence were among the most conspicuous peculiarities. 
These are the qualities which are su])posed by some 
historians to be the chief gifts of these tribes to our 
modern life; and, however that may be, it is certain that 
in no respect was the Teutonic condition more entirely 
in contrast with that of the life of antiquity than in this. 
Throughout the ancient world the State was everything, 
the individual nothing. The practice was reversed in 
the case of the barbarians, and in their mode of life 
it was impossible that the principle of individualism 
should not be greatly developed. 

Equality with them, of course, did not mean a claim 
founded upon what are sometimes called natural rights, 
still less was it that kind of equality which prevailed in 
the Roman Empire, where all were equal, it is true, 
before the law, but the equality was an equality of slaves. 
But the boast of the barbarian freemen was that a true 
equality, founded on the supposed common possession 
of honor, courage, devotion, had always been recognized 
among them as their most precious inheritance. And 
they pointed for proof of this claim to what has been 
sometimes deemed a feature of the existence of an aris- 
tocratic system among them, — the practice which was 
common among the young warriors of devoting them- 
selves absolutely to the service of some renowned chief. 



48 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

with no other hope of reward, at least in the earlier 
times, than a share in the glory he achieved. In this 
relation, individualism was stimulated to the utmost, 
while it was inseparably linked with loyal and devoted 
service to a su})erior. Tliis is the true ideal of tlie 
highest human service, never perhaps fully realized 
except in our relations towards Him " whose service is 
perfect freedom/' No doubt, too, we find here the 
germ of all that was best in the feudal system as a form 
of human government, although at no time can it be 
fairly described, at least when that system was fully 
developed, as having been in practice (to use the fervid 
rhetoric of Burke) ^^the nurse of manly sentiment and 
heroic enterprise,'^ or as " maintaining that subordi- 
nation of the heart which kept alive in servitude itself 
the spirit of an exalted freedom/' There can be no 
doubt that this sentiment of loyalty to a chief, com- 
bined with pride in their personal independence, had 
a permanent effect upon the history of the races 
which conquered the Empire, even forming a distin- 
guisliing mark at the present day between those nations 
purely Teutonic and races more or less Latin in their 
origin. 

Another contribution made by the barbarians to the 
peculiar characteristics both of mediaeval and of modern 
times was their earnest conviction of the sacredness of 
the life of a freeman as distinguished from that of a 
slave. Slaves, as we all know, held their lives, as well 
as -their liberty, very much at the arbitrary caprice of 



PUNISHMENT OF CRIMES. 49 

tlieir masters, both among the Romans and during the 
mediaeval age; but while crimes against the person or 
j^roperty were always punished in Rome, as they are 
with us, as offences against the majesty of the State, 
no crimes among the barbarians committed by freemen, 
except perhaps treason, were made capital offences, but 
were rather regarded as injuries to the individual or 
to his family, for which atonement could be and was 
made by the payment of money, projiortioned not so 
much to the gravity of the offence as to the rank of 
the offender or his victim. The sum to be paid was 
called by the Germans the weregeld, and the principle 
upon which this kind 0/ satisfaction for crime was made 
is not unknown to our modern criminal law. With 
this, another peculiarity has left at least a trace in 
modern law, and that is the practice by which the denial 
of the party accused, supported by the oaths of certain 
compurgators, as they were called, declaring that they 
believed that such a denial was true, was considered as 
judicially equivalent to its truth when established by 
evidence from other sources. When no other testimony 
was accessible, a resort was had to trial by battle, as it 
was called, — in other words, to a fight between the parties 
or their champions, — which was supposed to be an appeal 
to God's judgment to settl'e the dispute according to 
right. The barbarian codes, especially those of the two 
great families of the Frankish tribes, the Salian and 
the Ripuarian, are filled with minute regulations in re- 
gard to these subjects, showing not merely the permanent 



50 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

characteristic traits of the people, but how utterly un- 
Roinaii they were, and how difficult and tedious must 
have been the process by which they were combined and 
assimilated with the manners and ideas of the countries 
which they invaded. 

As to this word " invasion/^ there is some liability 
to misapprehension from its use. The invasion of the 
barbarians was not like the torrent which overwhelms, 
but rather like a slow, persistent force which under- 
mines, disintegrates, and crumbles. The Germans were 
not strangers to the Koraan Empire when they began 
their conquests. As far back as the battle of Pharsalia, 
the victory over Pompey was decided by the Gallic aux- 
iliaries enlisted by Csesar in the service of the republic. 
It is well known that many of the Roman Emperors 
were barbarians who had been successful soldiers in the 
Imperial army ; that military colonies were established 
on the frontiers composed of men of various races 
under the control of Roman discipline ; that the Goths, 
before they revolted against the authority of the Em- 
peror, were his chosen troops ; that the great Alaric was 
a Roman general ; that the shores of the Danube and 
the Rhine, which marked the limits of the Empire, were 
lined with cities which were at the same time Roman 
colonies and peopled with men of the Teutonic races. 
AVhen the barbarians did actually occupy the territory 
their movement seems at first to have been characterized 
by a strange mixture of force with a sentiment of awe 
and reverence for the Roman name. In Italy and in 



NATURE OF THE INVASION. 51 

Gaul they appropriated to themselves two-thirds of tlie 
lands, but they souglit to govern their conquests by 
means of the Roman law and administration, a ma- 
chine which proved in their hands, by the way, a rather 
clumsy means of government. They robbed the pro- 
vincials of all the movable property they possessed, but 
tlie suffering they inflicted is said not to have been as 
great as that caused by the exactions of the Roman tax- 
gatherer. The number of armed invaders lias doubt- 
less been exaggerated. The whole force of the Burgun- 
dian tribe, whose territory, in the southeast of modern 
France, extended to the Rhone at Avignon, did not, it 
is said, exceed sixty thousand in all, while the armed 
bands of Clovis, who changed the destinies not only of 
Gaul but of Europe, were not greater than one-tenth 
of that number. The great change in their life was, 
as I have said, that they ceased to be wanderers ; they 
became, in a measure at least, fixed to the soil; and, 
in contrast with the Romans, they preferred to live in 
the country and not in the towns. In this they fol- 
lowed their Teutonic habits, little knowing what a 
mighty change this new distribution of population was 
to cause in the social condition of Europe. They re- 
tained, too, their old military organization, and, aftei 
attempts more or less successful to use the Roman 
administration for the ordinary purposes of govern- 
ment, they abandoned it, and ruled the countries they 
conquered by simple military force, under their Dukes 
and Counts, the Romans generally being allowed in 



52 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

their private relations to govern themselves by the 
forms of the Roman law. 

I have spoken of the peculiarities of the Teutonic 
tribes as if they were common to the whole race. But 
it is to be remembered that there were diifering degrees 
of civilization among them at all times. The Goths, 
both Eastern and Western, were certainly far more ad- 
vanced in this respect than the Franks or Saxons. The 
object of their great king, Theodoric (Ostrogoth, as op- 
posed to Visigoth), as declared by him in his conquest 
of Italy, was to restore the Roman name with Gothic 
strength, while the codes of the Visigoths in Spain, the 
united work of the nobility and bishops of that country, 
are strongly marked by the influence of Roman law. 
Even the fierce and untamed Franks shared the sentiment 
of awe and veneration with which the Roman name was 
still regarded in the most remote regions. Certainly no 
picture in history is more curious than the triumphal 
display made by Clovis of the title and purple robe of 
the Roman patrician and consul which had been sent to 
him by Anastasius, the Emperor at Constantinople, after 
the Franks had conquered the last remnant of Roman 
Gaul. It would seem that a Roman title was needed 
by popular sentiment in this case, as in that of Pepin 
afterwards, to transform a king de facto into one dejure. 
There was, too, of course, a great difference in the char- 
acter of the permanent influence of the barbarians in 
those countries, such as Britain and Northern Germany, 
which, owing to their remoteness, had never been fully 



PRINCIPLES ESTABLISHED. 53 

civilized after the Roman pattern, and in those, such as 
Gaul and Spain, where the civilization had long been 
identical with that of Italy. Making allowances for 
these differences, we may say that the invaders in the 
fourth and fifth centuries brought into the Western 
Roman Empire by their invasions four distinct, per- 
manent influences or tendencies, viz. : 

1. The principle of representative government, as 
shown in the assemblies of freemen, where the common 
interests and military enterprises of the tribe were dis- 
cussed and settled. 

2. The principle of royalty in a new form. The 
king must be of a divine descent, but his election, also, 
by his fellow- warriors was essential. 

3. The sentiment of devotion or loyalty to a chieftain, 
constituting the relation of military patronage. 

4. A strong feeling of personal independence. 

We come now to speak of tlie influence of Christianity 
upon the barbarian tribes after they had occupied the 
Roman territory, and of the conversion of those who 
remained outside its limits. This influence, organized 
by the Church in both cases, was the great agency which 
made possible a real fusion of the opposing Latin and 
Teutonic ideas when they came in contact, and thus has 
much to do with the growth of the life of the Middle 
Age. We must always bear in mind that the Christian 
system was the only exponent of the grand principle of 
the visible unity of government then recognized in the 

world, as the Roman Imperial system had been, and tliat 

5* 



54 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

it claimed, as Rome had done, to bring under the same 
allegiance not only the Greek and the Roman, but all 
men, whether barbarian or Scythian, bond or free. It 
had faith in its mission, which it never lost, even in its 
darkest days. Indeed, the power of the Church imme- 
diately after the downfall of the Empire, in the. midst 
of the confusion which then prevailed, may be compared 
to what the metallurgists call a flux, reducing to a state 
of fusion and homogeneity the rebellious elements of 
which European life was then composed. 

In the time of Constantine, Christianity, under the 
organization of bishops more or less controlled by the 
action of both clergy and laity, w^as established not only^ 
in Italy, but in all the provinces of the West, — in 
Illyria, in Africa, in Gaul, and in certain portions of 
Britatn. jS^ominally under the general supervision of the 
Emperor, the Church formed a veritable imperium hi im- 
jjerio, with its own laws, officers, revenues, and powers 
of administration. While the Imperial power was being 
undermined by corruption and weakness within and by 
fierce assaults from without, the Church grew stronger 
and stronger every day. It was like the ark of God 
in the desert : no profane hand was bold enough to 
touch it, and where it rested there alone was safety. 
While all else that was Roman was crumbling or being 
submerged, the Church alone, in its power over the wills 
and passions of men, stood erect and undaunted. We 
must not think of it, then, as a mere teacher of morals, 
or even as an exemplar of Christian virtue only. In all 



POSITION OF THE CLERGY. 55 



the provinces and in the larger towns the clergy filled all 
the important offices, and they assumed those municipal 
functions exercised by the curiales which had been given 
up by laymen because their performance entailed ruin- 
ous sacrifices on those who held them. Wherever in 
these calamitous times there remained in any of the 
cities an official defensor populi, whose chief business 
it was to protect the people against arbitrary taxation, 
the holder of this office, who inherited some of the 
authority of the old tribunes, was sure to be a bishop. 
It is not going, indeed, too far to say that when the 
Emperor Justinian gave to the bishoj^s by decree a sort 
of general surveillance over all the public functionaries of 
the Empire he was merely confirming by law a practice 
Avhich had long existed. The intercession of the Bishop 
of Rome with Alaric, with Attila, and with Ganseric, 
appealing to those victorious chieftains to spare the city 
of Rome from the horrors of a siege, must be regarded 
not merely as the courageous performance of a Christian 
duty on the one side, by which superstitious terrors 
were aroused on the other, but also as an assertion of 
an official authority, the claims of which were gener- 
ally recognized. The Arian Goths, as has been said, 
while they appropriated to their own use two-thirds of 
the lands in Italy, did not touch the churches of the 
Catholic faith. 

For various reasons, then, when the Roman authority 
was withdrawn from the Gallic provinces the Church 
was not merely the only organized element of government 



56 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

left there, but in one sense it was never more powerful 
or prosperous than after the occupation of the country 
by the barbarians. It had, through the devotion of the 
faithful, increased in riches as well as in power, and in 
this way, it is said, it had lost something of its early 
zeal and purity. However that may be, it is certain 
that before the fifth century closed there was not only 
in Gaul, but generally throughout the West, that prac- 
tical recognition of the authority of the Church, and the 
supremacy of the Bishop of Rome as its head, which, 
however unlike it may have been to the doctrine of the 
papal supremacy of later days, still bound all Western 
Christendom in bonds more or less close to the See of 
St. Peter. This is not the place to discuss in what 
way this supremacy was established. The fact remains, 
that by this thoroughly organized system Christianity 
w^s spread and the Church governed for more than a 
thousand years. The changes produced in the world's 
opinions and destiny by these events must be regarded 
as second in importance in their far-reaching results 
only to those caused by the introduction of Christianity 
itself. Whatever else was involved in them, they sub- 
stituted the unity of the E-oman Catholic faith, worship, 
and government for the unity of E,oman power, law, 
and administration. The city of God, as St. Augustine 
says, was to be built upon the ruins of the Imperial 
mistress of the world. 

Let us study some of the steps in this process as his- 
tory shows them to us. Beginning with a recognition 



WORK OF THE CHURCH. 57 

of the fact that in the fifth century the Popes were 
regarded practically as heads of the Church in Western 
Europe, the question is, how they reduced the bar- 
barian conquerors to the obedience of the Catholic 
faith. We must, of course, confine ourselves to the 
consideration of a very limited part of their work ; 
and yet its results were of the most far-reaching kind. 
We must remember that at that time there was really 
no line drawn, as there is now, between laws regulating 
civil and religious life. The relations of each to the 
other were inextricably blended. It seems a small 
thing to say that for more than two centuries the Church 
bent all its energies to the extirpation of Arianism and 
to the conversion of the Northern barbarians, and that 
the master-statesmen of that day. Popes Leo I. and 
Gregory the Great, directed its policy; and yet it means 
that through these agencies the destiny of the whole 
world was changed. 

As has been said, the tribes which occupied the Empire 
at its downfall — the Goths, the Alani, the Suevi, the 
Burgundians — were Arians. Among the Roman popu- 
lation of Western Europe they were no doubt quite as 
much hated as heretics as they were feared as invaders. 
The orthodox Church in the provinces, except perhaps 
in Africa, seems, notwithstanding their presence, to have 
preserved its organization unimpaired. If any efforts 
were made for the conversion of the Arians by pacific 
means, they were unsuccessful. The Church, too, in its 
efforts to reduce the barbarians to obedience, resorted to 



58 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

that singular combination of force and persuasion, and 
that extraordinary power of improving the opportunities 
which presented themselves to her, which, speaking now 
only of merely human means, have made the organization 
of the Roman Church the most powerful and effective 
for its purpose of any which the world has ever seen. 

It has already been said that the Frankish tribes in 
their original strongholds along the course of the middle 
and lower Rhine were, with the exception of the Saxons, 
the only invaders of ^he Roman territory not nominally 
Christian. They, too, were the last of the invaders, at 
least while a shadow of the Roman authority remained. 
They were always regarded as the most untamed and 
ferocious of all the Teutonic tribes, and, as the event 
proved, were able not only to extinguish all Roman 
authority in the West, but to acquire and retain a su- 
premacy over the other barbarians who had previously 
occupied that portion of the Empire. The history, 
then, of the Frankish domination in Gaul, Spain, Italy, 
and Germany, and especially its conflict with whatever 
was distinctly Roman, — its religion, its language, its 
manners, and the faint traces of life still left in its 
municipiay — that history, from Clovis to Charlemagne, 
is the history of the beginnings of modern Europe. 

The Franks, or, as they were afterwards called, the 
Merovingians (sea-warriors), occupied, in the middle of 
the fifth century, the territory forming a part of modern 
Holland and Belgium and a considerable portion of 
what are now known as the Prussian Rhine provinces, 



PRANKISH CONQUESTS. 59 



on eacli side of the river. The tribe was composed of 
two branches,— the one the Salian (the northern), and 
the other the Ripnarian. They became united for the 
purpose of conquering Gaul, and did not differ mucli, 
except that the liipuarians, owing to their nearer contact 
with the Romans, had become somewhat more tractable 
than the Salians. In the year 481 Clovis was chief of 
tlie Salian Franks, and began his conquests. In 486 he 
defeated the Roman patrician Syagrius, who maintained 
a power supported by scarcely anything but the Impe- 
rial name. Ten years later the Alemanni, one of the 
most warlike of the Teutonic tribes, who were disposed 
to dispute with the Franks the great prize of Roman 
Gaul, were entirely crushed; and still later the Burgun- 
dians, on the upper Rhine and in the southeastern por- 
tion of France, were overcome, and their kingdom, in 
a few years afterwards, destroyed; and last, and most 
important of all, the great Visigothic kingdom, south of 
the Loire and extending to the Pyrenees, was attacked, 
and only that portion of it which now forms the larger 
part of the Spanish Peninsula remained in the hands 
of the descendants of Alaric. 

There is only one way, it seems to me, to account for 
this rapid and complete subjugation by the Franks of 
tribes of the same race whose numbers were far greater 
than those by whom they were attacked. These con- 
quests were no doubt due in a large measure to the 
power of the Church, and the baptism of Clovis in 496 
marks the beginning of a most important era in the 



60 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

history of Europe, in which priestly power was, if not 
absolutely substituted for armed force as a means of 
supreme rule, at any rate so inseparably blended with it 
for many centuries as to shape the policy of European 
governments. Clovis, it is true, when he began his 
conquests was a heathen, but, as he was at least not an 
Arian, he was regarded by the bishops in Gaul as a fit- 
tins: instrument in the hands of Divine Providence for 
extirpating that hated heresy. Personally he seems to 
have been, both before and after his conversion, one of 
the most bloodthirsty and ferocious savages of whom 
history makes mention ; but these were qualities by no 
means inconsistent in those days with a reputation for 
orthodoxy, and at any rate all this was forgotten by 
the bishops in their zeal to suppress the open profession 
of heresy. We are told by grateful contemporaneous 
churchmen that at the baptism of Clovis the angels in 
heaven rejoiced. Those who truly loved God on earth 
were made glad, it is said, on this memorable occasion 
as the bishop, St. Kemy, gave him this short summary 
of Christian doctrine : '"' Learn, Sicamber, to burn what 
thou hast adored, and to adore what thou hast burned.'' 
The reasons given by the bishops (who repaid the 
toleration extended to them by the Visigothic monarch 
by encouraging the invasion of his country) for the suc- 
cess of Clovis are very significant in deciding as to 
whose benefit the invasion enured. ^' Clovis," they 
say, "confessed the Trinity. He destroyed the heretics, 
and thus extended his conquests in Gaul. Alaric (the 



CONVERSION OF CLOVIS. 61 

Visigothic king) denied the Trinity. He was deprived 
of his kingdom, of his people, and of what was more 
important, eternal life." It was evident that Clovis 
iiimself knew what was expected of him, and upon whose 
power he could rely. With new-born zeal he exclaimed, 
'^ I am grieved because these Goths, who are Arians, in- 
habit the best part of Gaul. Let us assail them, with 
the aid of God, and drive them out and possess their 
lands!" 

There is a strange mixture of religion with an inborn 
love of plunder in these proceedings, characteristic of the 
time. We cannot, of course, defend such an alliance 
by any reasons which would be regarded as satisfac- 
tory now, but there is no doubt that it was thought per- 
fectly natural and legitimate at the time; and as little, 
in my opinion, that it was one of those cases which 
we meet with so frequently in history in which God, in 
his own way, has brought good out of what seems at the 
time to have been unmixed evil. Strange as it may 
seem, a vast deal of what is most characteristic of our 
modern system is due to the suppression of Arianisra, 
or rather to the substitution of the organized Catho- 
lic Church for it in the regions in which it had been 
the dominant system. For the conquests of Clovis in 
Gaul gave the death-blow to Arianism, or rather to 
its political power everywhere. The Visigoths w^ere 
driven into Spain, and were there, some time afterwards, 
induced by the orthodox bishops to adopt the creed of 
Xlcsea, and thus to perfect the religious unity of the 



02 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY, 

Christian population. The Vandals in Africa, who had 
been the most obstinate of the Arians, yielded to the 
Catholic Church, while Belisarius, in the last display 
ever made of the ancient Roman energy, broke up the 
kingdom of the Ostrogothic Arlans in Italy. 

The Frankish kings of the Merovingian race, on 
the whole, kept good faith witli the Church, to whose 
influence they were so much indebted for their exten- 
sive dominion in Gaul. These rulers, unlike those who 
reigned at Constantinople, had neither the inclination 
nor the capacity to meddle with mere theological ques- 
tions. The Church was not only undisturbed in the 
profession of its dogmas, but the rude warriors of the 
Franks embraced the faith with a zeal that was not less 
enthusiastic because it was on some points blind and 
undiscerning, and savoring somewhat of the sentiment 
with which they had formerly regarded Odin and his 
fellow-divinities. But the Franks did not interfere with 
the internal organization of the Church. The bishops, 
indeed, became more powerful than ever. On the ona 
hand, the popular element which in the beginning in- 
fluenced so much their election and administration was 
gradually eliminated, and on the other the principle of 
that aristocratic organization which gradually destroyed 
the control of their chiefs by the assemblies of freemen 
— the fundamental basis, as we have seen, of the Teu- 
tonic organization — was transferred into the Church also. 
The bishops became powerful, not merely as ecclesias- 
tics, but as great lords with large possessions and great 



POWERS OF THE CLERGY. 63 

powers. Their wealth increased enormously, both from 
donations and legacies ; they had the riglit not merely 
of trying the clergy for criminal offences in their own 
courts, but also of settling there questions concerning 
property which might arise in which any officer of the 
Church should be a party. They had not merely the 
right to receive donations and inheritances, but also to 
administer as they thought best, and for such objects 
as they might designate, their revenues. The Church 
estates were free from taxation, and in this age rose the 
pretension, which was never given up by the clergy 
until the French Revolution, that the Church should 
pay no taxes, because it served the king by its prayers. 
But with these pretensions came the civilizing and re- 
freshing influence, in that wild time, of true charity. 
The right of asylum, or refuge from the avenger of 
blood, hospitals for lepers, provisions for the sick and 
})Oor, cathedral schools, religious houses, in which the 
inmates, by precept and example, sought to reclaim the 
earth from the spoliation of fierce and cruel men and 
make it yield its fruits for the use of God's poor, — all 
these we must never lose sight of, even if our object 
be merely to ascertain how the Church conquered the 
barbarians. AYe shall find that the Church's power 
was not really founded on the Church's pride, but on 
its charity. 

It is true that many very unfit men among the higher 
Frankish nobles, no doubt attracted by the splendor of 
the position of the bishops, thrust themselves at times 



64 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

into the hierarchy ; but, whatever may have been the 
scandal to the Church from this source, it is by no means 
certain that by this practice, for a time at least, its in- 
fluence over the rude kings of the Franks was lessened. 
After a time the two systems, that of the Church and 
of the State, mutually supported each other, and noth- 
ing of general interest was undertaken without the aid 
of each. We beo:in to see the direct influence of the 
Church upon the system of these rude Franks when 
we find the Pope calling on Charles Martel for aid 
against the schismatic Lombards; when we find Pepin 
begging the Pope to make him by divine authority a 
king dejure^ as he already was one de facto ^ and when, 
on that famous Christmas day in the year 800, Charle- 
magne was crowned, at Rome, Emperor of the restored 
Western Empire, in token that a new world-monarchy 
had been formed, of which the King of the Franks was 
to be Cwsa7' Imjperator Sempei' Augustus, and the Pope 
Pontifex Maximus, 

The next step in tlie advance of the Prankish power, 
thus made up of the elements of civil and ecclesiastical 
authority firmly welded together, was logically, if not 
quite chronologically, the conversion of the Northern 
nations. The Prankish kings had established the 
Church on a firm basis within their own dominions. 
It was now the turn of the Church to lead the way, or 
at least to march to the spiritual conquest of Germany 
in company with the armies which sought to annex 
its territory to the dominion of the Merovingians. In 



CONVERSION OF THE NORTHERN TRIBES. 65 

expeditions where both motives operated so powerfully, 
it is not easy now to test their comparative force. That 
the Church was sincere in its desire for the conversion 
of these heathen, and that from the highest motives, we 
may infer from the character of the missionaries she sent 
among them, and from that natural desire to propagate 
what she believed to be the truth, which was conspicu- 
ous even in her most degenerate days. But, with that 
wisdom and sagacity in applying means appropriate to 
gain her ends at a particular time which have always 
characterized her, she saw clearly that her object was 
not to be accomplished by moral force alone. As St. 
Boniface, the Apostle of Germany and martyr of the 
faith, avows, "Without the authority of the King of the 
Franks, and without the respect which that authority 
inspired, nothing could have been done either to teach 
the people, or to protect the priests and monks who 
were engaged in this hazardous service, or to break up 
the pagan superstitions or the worship of idols.'' 

In this way the Church became the natural and neces- 
sary ally of the Franks in the conquest of Germany, 
and, while she must bear her share of the responsi- 
bility for the horrible cruelties attendant upon it, and 
especially for the wholesale conversions that were made 
when the alternative was extermination or baptism, still 
we may find some excuse, not merely in the permanent 
good results which followed the destruction of the 
heathen religions, but also in the reflection that, in the 
opinion then prev^alent, conquest and Christianity stood 

6* 



66 MEDIJEVAL HISTORY. 

in relation to each other as cause and effect. There is 
something revolting to us in the notion of men being 
made Christians by the power of the sword, but cir- 
cumstances forbade either statesmen or churchmen to 
entertain such opinions in the sixth and seventh cen- 
turies. For it was not only the spread of Christianity 
which was involved in these wars of Charlemagne and 
his predecessors with the fierce tribes of Germany, but 
the future of Western Europe as well. The heathen 
surrounded the Empire of the Franks, scarcely per- 
manently settled in Gaul, as the Franks had threatened 
the Roman, and a new and fiercer invasion was feared 
unless its power was broken in its native strongholds. 

It is refreshing to turn from these doubtful methods 
of propagating Christianity to the evangelic labors of 
those true defenders of the faith, whose record of devo- 
tion, self-sacrifice, and successful endeavor to plant a 
permanent civilization in the wilds of Germany forms 
one of the brightest chapters in history. We must 
understand that the inhabitants of certain portions of 
Germany, such as Frisia on the north. Saxony and 
Thuringia in the middle, and Bavaria and a part of the 
country of the Alemanni on the south, had little to do 
with the invasion of the Empire. They had remained 
untamed heathen and German, with little or no infusion 
of the Roman element. Towards these countries the 
zeal of the early missionaries was directed. St. Colum- 
ban, an Irish monk, established himself, with twelve 
of his countrymen, in the midst of the heathen in 



THE PAPAL MISSIONARIES. G7 

589, near the Vosges Mountains, and spread the Chris- 
tian doctrine, with wonderful success, among tlie po})u- 
lation of what is now Alsace, Baden, and Switzerland, 
and his disciple, St. Gall, established among the Grisons 
one of the most famous monasteries of the Middle Age. 
From these points rays of light reached Southwest Ger- 
many, the missionary stations being advanced far into 
Bavaria. The work was not at first as thoroughly done 
as it would have been had it been better organized. It 
needed unity of plan, and, above all, some one control- 
lintr and directins; authority. This was found when the 
Pope became the acknowledged head of the Western 
Church. We all remember the story of the English boys 
found by Pope Gregory the Great in the slave-market at 
Rome, and how this incident is supposed to have induced 
him to send Auo-ustine and his monks to convert the 
heathen Anglo-Saxons, then occupying the south of 
England. This enterprise proved so successful that it 
led him to take similar methods to assure the triumph 
of the Church in Germany. His agents for this holy 
purj)ose were converted Anglo-Saxons, and Frisia, the 
country v/hich stretches along the North Sea from the 
Elbe to the Weser, then perhaps the rudest of all the 
German districts, was the scene of their first labors. 
Here little success at first attended them, for a reason 
which prevailed apparently nowhere else in Germany, 
and that was that Frankish conquest and Christianity 
were both presented to them at the same time, and both 
were equally regarded as the badge of slavery. But the 



68 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

heroism of Wijlibrod and Wiiifred, who were persistent 
in their efforts, and the martyrdom of the last, whose 
name had been changed by tlie Pope to Boniface, at last 
completed the triumph of Christianity in these remote 
regions. Time would fail me to tell of the labors of 
many others, men of whom the world was not worthy, 
the true pioneers of civilization among these tribes, of 
St. Anskar, for instance, the " Apostle of the North,'^ as 
he was called, to whom the Scandinavian countries were 
indebted for their first knowledge of Christianity. But 
a few words must be said about Winfred, St. Boniface, 
the '^Apostle of Germany;" for certainly no man before 
Charlemagne did as much for the civilization of that 
country. An Englishman of noble birth, he placed 
himself under the direction of the Pope as a missionary 
to the heathen tribes of Central Germany. He was 
a statesman as well as a sincere zealot, and he allied 
himself in carrying out his plans closely, as we have 
seen, with the Merovingian kings, whose wars in Thu- 
ringia and Saxony were guided much by his advice. He 
was as brave as he was politic. He could cut down 
a sacred oak supposed to be under the protection of 
the god Donar, the Scandinavian god of thunder, and 
die a martyr's death, as he did, with the same cheerful 
courage, for the propagation of the faith. He could 
live like a hermit in a monastery, and yet, when duty 
to the Church and obedience to the Pope called him 
to the spiritual administration of Germany, he could 
give the divine sanction to the usurpation of Pepin 



SAINT BONIFACE. 69 

of the Merovingian crown. He could rule with almost 
uncliecked power from his Archiepiscopal see of 
Mentz the whole Church of Germany, and yet, in the 
midst of it all, seek to renew the arduous labors of 
the humble missionary and to meet a martyr's death. 
He established those great centres of civilization of 
those times, — monasteries and bishops' sees. Such a 
man is worthily called the '* Apostle of Germany," and 
the work that he did, unlike that of Charlemagne, 
has never been undone, but, ever fresh and vigorous, 
bears fruit more and more abundantly. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE FEANKISH CONQUESTS AND CHARLEMAGNE. 

The occupation of Central Europe by the Franks 
under Clovis and his descendants (known in history as 
Merovingians) is an important historical fact, because it 
signifies the permanent transfer of the power which had 
controlled these reo^ions from the Latin to the German 
races. The record of the Merovingian rule in Gaul for 
two hundred and seventy years is a most dreary one, 
made up of constant struggles among the descendants of 
Clovis for the chieftainship of the tribe, during which 
the kino-dom of the Franks was divided amono; them 
no less than eight times. We look in vain during a 
larger part of this period for the lasting growth of any 
one of those ideas upon which our modern civilization 
rests, and which Ave had reason to find after the appar- 
ent combination of the Teutonic and Roman character- 
istics which had been begun under the guiding influence 
of the Christian Church. In Gaul, the fierce warrior 
chiefs seem to have dragged the Church itself almost 
into the abyss of barbarism. In Spain and in Eng- 
land, during the same era, the conflict among the differ- 
ent races forming the population ceased, and progress 
was made not only towards something like unity in the 

form of government, but also in the abandonment of 
70 



BOUNDARIES OF THE FRANKISH KINGDOM. 71 

those habits of restless wandering for the sake of plun- 
der, which cannot coexist with even the lowest form of 
civilization. In Gaul, in these respects, tlie Franks 
were almost as lawless as when they roamed in the 
forests of Germany. 

It is not necessary to recount these obscure quarrels of 
the successors of Clovis. What is more Important is to 
know what were the boundaries of their kingdom towards 
the close of the Merovingian dynasty. I ought per- 
haps to qualify my statement that we find none of the 
characteristics of the policy of a civilized government 
among the Franks in the later days of the Merovin- 
gians, by saying that they at least never, even in the 
most disordered times, neglected measures to secure their 
eastern frontier from invasion by the tribes, more bar- 
barous than they, who bordered upon it. Over the 
tribes outside their limits — the Frisians, the Saxons, and 
others — the Franks claimed persistently a supremacy 
which was maintained both then and in the time of 
Charlemagne by constant wars, the object being rather 
to insure the safety of their own lands than to acquire 
new territory. Towards the close of tlie Merovingian 
period, then, the frontier of the kingdom of the Franks 
on the east and north was the river Rhine, in Ger- 
many, and on the south and wTst the river Garonne, in 
France, — from Amsterdam to Bordeaux, and from the 
Mediterranean to the German Ocean. This territory 
was divided into four great districts, or kingdoms as 
they were called : Austrasia, or the eastern kingdom, 



72 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

from tlie river Rhine to the Meuse, with Metz as its 
principal city; Neustria, or the western kingdom, extend- 
ing from Austrasia to the ocean on the west, and to 
tlie Loire on the south ; Aquitaine, south of that river 
to the foot of the Pyrenees ; and Burgundy, from the 
Rhone to the Alps, including Switzerland. These four 
kingdoms became, before the extinction of the Mero- 
vingian race, consolidated into two, viz., Austrasia 
and Neustria, Eastern and Western Francia, — modern 
Germany and modern France, roughly speaking, — of 
which the first was to gain the pre-eminence, as it was 
the seat of the power of that race of Charlemagne which 
seized upon the kingdoms of the Merovingians. But 
in these kingdoms, while the family of Clovis occupied 
them, the royal power became more and more feeble as 
time went on, a condition which is illustrated by the 
title given in history to these kings, — that of ro'is 
faineants. The truth seems to be that, owing to the 
degradation into which the power of the Merovingians 
had gradually sunk under the strong will of the Mayors 
of the Palace, there was for these kings rien a, faire. 
The military organization of the Franks was kept up 
with great care. It will be remembered that the mili- 
tary service of the chiefs was paid for by them in 
grants of land, sometimes hereditary and sometimes 
not; and that these grantees, usually the companions 
of the King, under the name of Antrustions, Leudes, 
etc., became possessed of vast domains and correspond- 
ing power. We call these rude barbarian chiefs kings ; 



HABITS OF THE FRANKISH KINGS. 73 

but there was nothing characteristic of the modern 
monarch about them. They may have been larger pro- 
prietors of lands than their Antrustions, and a nominal 
allegiance was due to them. The Franks had almost 
a superstitious reverence for the rights of their kings, 
as they were supposed to be of divine lineage; but 
practically the aristocratic element, and not the kingly 
element, was the true basis of the power of government 
as it existed among them as soon as their wanderings 
had ceased. Thierry gives us an interesting picture of 
the domestic life of one of these so-called kings, from 
which it would appear that he resembled as little a 
feudal lord with his government organized by a graded 
hierarchy as he did a modern monarch with the forces 
which centralization has placed at his disposal. " The 
Frankish kings," he says, "did not inhabit cities. They 
moved about from one of their domains to another, 
remaining in each as long as the provisions which 
had there been accumulated for themselves and their 
companions lasted. One of these immense farms where 
the Frankish kings held their court, and which they 
much preferred to the finest cities of Roman Gaul, was 
Bralne. The royal palace there was not like the castles 
of the feudal times. The large house was built of wood ; 
and it was surrounded by lodgings for the officers of the 
palace. There were in the neighborhood other houses, 
of less imposing appearance, occupied by a large num- 
ber of persons, brought together by the necessities of the 
king and his retainers, who were engaged in various 



74 MEDL-EVAL HISTORY. 

handicrafts, — silversmiths, weavers, tanners, etc. The 
materials for their work, and their implements, had 
generally been stolen from the neighboring Gallic town." 
The houses of the farmers and the huts of the slaves of 
the domain made up the royal encampment, the general 
appearance being that of an ancient German village 
community upon a large scale. It is evident that a 
chief living in this way would have little chance of 
resisting a combination of turbulent nobles whose ob- 
ject might be to extend their own power and domains. 
And so it happened. 

The most powerful officer of a Frankish king was 
his steward, or, as he was called, the mayor of his pal- 
ace. He was generally his most trusted companion or 
Antrustion, and of the highest rank and of the largest 
possessions among the nobles. In each of the four 
Frankish kingdoms he was the alter ego of the king 
Austrasia, Eastern Francia, — that is, Germany, — toward? 
the close of the Merovingian dynasty had become greatly 
superior in power and influence to Neustria. The great 
nobles in Austrasia profited by the dissensions of the 
descendants of Clovis to increase their own power, and 
these mayors of the palace were their leaders in this 
movement. In Austrasia the office had become heredi- 
tary in the family of Pepin of Landen (a small village 
near Liege), and under its guidance the degenerate chil- 
dren of Clovis in that kingdom fought for the suprem- 
acy with those equally degenerate in Neustria, at that 
time also under the real control of another mayor of 



THE FAMILY OF CHARLEMAGNE. 75 

the palace, called Ebroin. The result of tliis struggle, 
after much bloodshed and misery, was reached in the 
year 687 at the battle of Testry, in which the Austra- 
sians completely defeated the Neustrians. The {\2Xq 
of the event is important, as marking, practically, not 
merely the extinction of the first royal race of the 
Franks, — the Merovingians, — but also the preponder- 
ance in the government of Gaul of the GernTan ele- 
ment, as well as the consequent decline of the Roman 
and Gallic influence north of the Alps, and the rise of 
that power which in later years, and under Charle- 
magne, overshadowed all Europe. 

AVe must remember that the Merovingian princes 
were still nominally kings, Avhile all the real power was 
in the hands of the descendants of Pepin of Landen, 
mayors of the palace, and the policy of government was 
as fully settled by them as if they had been kings dejure 
as Avell as de facto. This family produced in its earlier 
days some persons who have become among the most 
conspicuous figures in history: — Pepin, the founder; 
Pepin le Gros, of Heristal ; Charles, his son, commonly 
called Martel, or the Hammerer ; Pepin le Bref, under 
whom the Carlovingian dynasty was, by aid of the Pope, 
recognized as the lawful successor of the Merovingians, 
even before the extinction of that race; and, lastly, 
Charles, surnamed the Great, or Charlemagne, one of 
the few men of the human race who, by common consent, 
have occupied the foremost rank in history. These Car- 
lovingians, or Carolingians, from the beginning claimed 



76 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

support for their dynasty on the ground that they should 
he regarded as true sovereigns, because they had done 
something for the advantage of the people over whom 
they ruled, in striking contrast, in this respect, with the 
do-nothing policy of their predecessors ; and we can have 
no better standard for judging their pretensions now. 
The history of this family claims our special attention 
and interest, for during its rule, and as a result of its 
policy, there was a rapid growth of some of the more 
active elements of our modern life. 

The object of Pepin of H^ristal was twofold, — to 
repress the disposition of the turbulent nobles to en- 
croach upon the royal authority, and to bring again 
under the yoke of the Franks those tribes in Germany 
who had revolted against the Frankish rule owing to the 
weakness of the Merovingian government. He measu- 
rably accomplished both objects, and a failure in either 
would undoubtedly have precipitated a new and de- 
structive wave of invasion upon unhappy Gaul. He 
seems to have had what perhaps is the best test at all 
times of the claims of a man to be a real statesman : 
some consciousness of the true nature of his mission, — 
the establishment of order. With a view of strength- 
ening his position, he revived some of the ancient and 
cherished customs of the Franks which had been aban- 
doned by his predecessors. He convoked those assem- 
blies of the people, the CJiamps de liars or de Mai^ 
which had been one of the original institutions of the 
Franks, where, as we have seen, every public measure 



SERVICES TO CIVILIZATION. 77 

was discussed and settled by the nobles before its adop- 
tion, but which had become since their occupation of Gaul 
councils of war only. His son and successor, Charles 
Martel, was even more conspicuous for the possession of 
the genius of statesmanship, but he exhibited it in a 
somewhat different direction. He, too, strove to hold 
the nobles in check, and to break the power of the Frisian 
and the Saxon tribes; and he fought besides, fortunately 
for his fame, one of the fifteen decisive battles in the his- 
tory of the world, that of Poitiers in 732, by which the 
Saracens, who had conquered Spain, and who had strong 
hopes of gaining possession of the whole of Western 
Europe, were driven back from Northern France, never 
to return. We can only estimate the importance of such 
a victory as this by reflecting what would have been the 
civilization of Europe had the Saracens succeeded in 
this battle, and had that civilization been drawn from 
Oriental and Mohammedan sources instead of from those 
that were Roman and Christian. Charles Martel, there- 
fore, saved Central Europe from the ruin threatening it 
from the Moslem hordes, while his father, Pepin, had 
forced back the tide of the barbarian invasion, ready to 
overwhelm it as it advanced from the East. His son, 
Pepin le Bref, is equally conspicuous with the rest in 
liistory, but in a somewhat different way. He continued 
the never-ending wars in Germany and in Gaul with the 
object of securing peace by the sword, and with more or 
less success. But his career is noteworthy principally 
because he completed the actual deposition of the last of 

7* 



78 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

the Merovingian race, whose nominal servants but real 
masters he and his predecessors, mayors of the palace, 
had been, and because he sought and obtained the sanc- 
tion of the Church for this usurpation. In the year 751 
Pepin thought that the anomalous position of the mayor 
of the palace, who had all the power and responsibility 
of the king, but without the title, a state of tilings 
which had lasted from the time of the battle of Testry, 
(687,) should be brought to an end. 

It is important to observe here not merely the very 
natural and proper feeling on his part that he who wields 
the power should possess the title, — because this had been 
more or less the practice of the Franks at all times, — but 
the evident belief which existed in the mind of this great 
ruler of the necessity of superadding to his own title and 
the choice of his nation the sanction of the Church. This 
indicates, it seems to me, a very diflPerent kind of recog- 
nition of the authority of the Church from that seen in 
the baptism of Clovis; and it would appear from the 
anxiety of Pepin to obtain the decision of the Pope in 
favor of his title to the crown, as well as from his stren- 
uous sup2:)ort of the Anglo-Saxon missionaries in Frisia 
and Saxony, that during the confusion and trouble of 
the later days of the Merovingians, however the civil 
power under the old system may have crumbled, that 
of the Church had gone on silently increasing. These 
rude warriors, barbarous and untamed in everything 
else, were forced at least to abandon as their king a 
descendant of Odin and to seek for one who would be 



THE POPES AND THE PRANKS. 79 



recognized as a true ruler by the God of the Christians. 
Surely this tenacity of life in tJie Christian organization 
while everything around it was falling into ruin is very 
remarkable. Pei)in's system was undoubtedly that of 
an alliance with the Church; but this, of course, he 
would not have sought had he not seen in it the means 
of the advancement of his own power and dynasty. 
So on the Pope's side the advantage of the alliance 
was very clear. 

Ever since the occupation of the larger portion of 
Italy by the Lombards, and the rest of the country by 
the representatives of the Greek Emperor at Constan- 
tinople, neither the civil nor the spiritual jurisdiction 
of the Pope in Italy had been treated with much respect. 
The Franks were not only the most powerful of all the 
tribes, but they alone of all the others were Catholic, the 
rest being Arians. It was natural that the Popes, in 
their distress caused by the encroachments of the Lom- 
bards and the want of protection by the Greelvs, should 
desire to call these redoubtable orthodox warriors to their 
aid. An appeal for this purpose was made to Charles 
Martel, who, notwithstanding his services to Christen- 
dom by driving back the Saracenic invasion, had fallen 
under the censure of the Church because he had distrib- 
uted the bishoprics in the countries he conquered among 
his own followers without its sanction. He was about 
to cross the Alps to aid the Pope, when he was over- 
taken by death. His astute son Pepin saw at once how 
he could gain advantage by ministering to the Pope's 



80 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

necessities. No doubt he valued liiglily the Pope's 
declaration to him that he who held the royal power 
might well hold the royal title, and thus the deposition 
of Childeric, the first consecration of Pepin by St. Bon- 
iface by order of the Pope, the journey of Stephen II. 
across the Alps for the purpose of imploring the aid 
of the great King of the Franks, the bestowal of the 
Roman diadem, and the Hebrew anointing of the 
chief who had been raised upon a buckler and saluted 
by his trusty companions after the manner of the 
Franks as their king, became the price paid by the 
Pope for the alliance with the Franks, and was the be- 
ginning of a system, more thoroughly organized under 
Charlemagne, by which the Pope's supremacy was as- 
sured beyond peradventure. 

The Pope's position at this time was one of very great 
embarrassment. Harassed by the Lombards, who were 
not only robbers, but who were also Arians, and who 
admitted none of the Catholic clergy to their councils, — 
with no succor from the Emperors at Constantinople 
(whose subject he nominally was) against the Lombards, 
and, indeed, in open revolt against them because as 
bishop and patriarch of the West he had forbidden the 
execution of the decree against the placing of images 
in the churches, — for these and many such reasons he 
sorely needed succor, and naturally in his necessity he 
turned to the powerful King of the Franks. The coro- 
nation of Pepin le Bref, first by St. Boniface, and then 
by the Pope himself, was the first step in the fulfilment 



PEPIN PATRICIAN OF ROME. 81 

of the alliance on his part. Pepin was soon called upon 
to do his share of the work. Twice at the bidding of 
the Pope he descended from the Alps, and, defeating 
the Lombards, was rewarded by him and the people of 
Rome with the title of Patrician. This title, wliich had 
been considered in the latter days of the Empire little 
inferior in dignity to that of Emperor or Consul, liad 
sunk with other things in the general decline so low 
that it seems to have meant in the time of Pepin little 
more than that of the defender or protector of the city 
of Rome, where the ancient municipal spirit and j^ower 
were not AvhoUy extinct. 

This succor of Pepin was the first substantial material 
aid given by the Frankish monarchs to the Popes. But 
more was to follow. On the death of Pepin, the Lom- 
bards again took up arms and harassed the Church's 
territory. Charlemagne, his successor, was called upon 
to come to the rescue, and he swept the Lombard power 
in Italy out of existence, annexing its territory to the 
Frankish kingdom, and confirming the grant of the 
Exarchate and of the Pentapolis to the Popes which his 
father had made. This was in the year 774. Such 
was the first act in that mighty drama, the outcome of 
which was to be that alliance of Church and State in 
Western Europe which was to color all subsequent his- 
tory. For twenty-five years Charlemagne ruled Rome 
nominally as Patrician, under the supremacy, equally 
nominal, of the Emperor at Constantinople. The true 
sovereign, recognized as such, was the Pope or Bishop 



82 MEDIJEVAL HISTORY. 

of Rome, but the actual power was in the hands of the 
mob, who at one time towards the close of the century, 
in the absence of both Emperor and Patrician, assaulted 
the Pope while conducting a procession, and forced him 
to abandon the city. This Pope, Leo, with a fine in- 
stinct as to the quarter from which succor could alone 
come, hurried to seek Charlemagne, who was then in 
Germany en2:ao;ed in one of his never-endiup; wars 
against the Saxons. The appeal for aid was not made 
in vain, and Charles descended once more from the Alps 
in the summer of 799, with his Prankish hosts. On 
Christmas day, a.d. 800, in the Church of St. Peter 
(not the modern temple, due to the genius of Michael 
Angelo, but one then more truly recalling Rome's 
proudest days, in the form of the ancient Greek basilica 
or court-house). Pope Leo, during the mass, and after 
the reading of the gospel, placed upon the brow of 
Charlemagne, who had abandoned his Northern furs 
for the dress of a Roman patrician, the diadem of the 
Caesars, and hailed him Imperator Semper Augustus j 
while the multitude shouted, ^' Carolo Augusto a Deo 
coronato magno et pacijlco Imperatori Vita et VidoriaJ^ 
In that shout and from that moment one of the most 
fruitful epochs of history begins. We shall trace its 
ever-present influence along the whole course of the 
history which we are to follow.* 

* I am indebted to Prof. Bryce's admirable work. " The Holy 
Eoman Empire," for this account of the coronation of Charle- 
magne and its significance in mediseval history. 



THEORY OF THE EMPIRE. 83 

Perhaps there never was a grander and more compre- 
hensive scheme of government propounded by statesmen 
for tlie ruling of the world, and one which, on the 
whole, responded so fully to the design of its founders. 
It had its basis in the profound convictions of the 
greatest thinkers of the mediaeval time that there were 
two principles, and two only, upon which the rightful 
government of mankind could be settled, — law and re- 
ligion ; and they believed they had found the only true 
exponents of these principles in the Ronian law and the 
Christian Church. The belief in the first was not a 
mere attachment to a tradition of Roman greatness, any 
more than faith in the other depended upon their ardent 
desire for the universal rule of the Church in the future. 
But it was rather that this combination formed their 
highest ideal of human life and human society. To 
them law and religion were the pillars upon which all 
true life is built, and they formed the only cohesive 
power of human society when force, which is the nega- 
tion of law as it is of reason, is discarded. In Imperial 
Rome the functions of the head of the law and the 
head of religion had been inseparably united in one 
person. The Emperor was always both Imperator 
Semper Augustus and Pontifex Maximus. But when 
Leo and Charlemagne designed, as they said, to revive 
the Western Roman Empire, three hundred and twenty- 
four years after the last Csesar of the West had left 
to his Eastern brother at Constantinople the sole head- 
ship of the world, it was impossible so to restore that 



84 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

organization that the unity of law and religion should 
be represented by the same person. The principle, how- 
ever, of absolute unity was maintained, although the 
world-monarchy and the world-religion were hereafter 
to be governed by two different persons, the one called 
the Emperor and the other the Pope. They were to 
be in the closest possible relations, supporting each 
other mutually in all their designs. According to this 
theory, the Emperor could not lawfully exist unless 
crowned by the Pope, any more than the Pope could 
become such without the consent of the Emperor. He 
was to be the champion, advocate, and defender of the 
Church, and his business was to extend its limits, to 
protect it in its privileges, and to support it in the exer- 
cise of its powers. The Holy Roman Church and the 
Holy Roman Empire, according to the mediaeval theory, 
were the same thing in two aspects : as divine and eter- 
nal the Pope was the head of the Church, as human and 
temporal the Emperor was commissioned to rule men's 
bodies and acts so as to conform them to the divine 
law as established by the Church. Of course, vulgar 
motives of aggrandizement, and even prudential motives 
of safety, both on the part of the Pope and the Em- 
])eror, had their place when this extraordinary scheme 
for the government of Europe was instituted. And yet 
undoubtedly a love of law and order and peace, founded 
on religion, as essential to the prosperity and safety of 
the race, was the governing motive of those who knew 
by personal experience, when they advocated the revival 



CHARLEMAGNE S CONQUESTS. 85 

of tliis Roman system of law, what anarchy was. That 
system, with all its faults, had at any rate assured peace 
and reasonable safety to the human race for a longer 
time than any other. The theory on which the scheme 
was based seems to us rather like the dreams of Plato 
than the work of the Churchmen and rude barbarians 
of a most calamitous period in histt)ry. If the Holy 
E,oman Empire was not destined to check fully, as it 
was designed, the flood of barbarism which constantly 
poured over Europe, it is none the less true that the 
scheme of a universal monarchy and a universal religion 
is one of the most persistent in history. We shall meet 
it again and again, not merely in the mediseval era, but 
in modern times, and we shall find that there is scarcely 
any event from which more momentous consequences 
have flowed than the coronation of Charlemagne by the 
Pope. 

In treating of the causes of that great historical event, 
the alliance of the family of Charlemagne with the Pope 
and the Church, in their logical order, I have antici- 
pated much of the history of the life of Charlemagne 
which made that alliance so fruitful of results. Charle- 
magne became the Emperor of the new Holy Roman 
Empire not merely because he was orthodox and be- 
cause it was essential to his own interests that he should 
maintain the orthodox faith with its fullest organiza- 
tion in his dominions, but also because, in the year 
800, he ruled over a larger portion of the territory of 
Europe than any Roman Emperor had ever done. His 



86 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

dominion extended from the river Elbe to the river 
Ebro, in Spain, and from the southern point of Italy 
to the German Ocean. It would be wearisome to give 
a detailed account of the wars by which the territory 
which did not come to him from his father was ac- 
quired. He conquered during his reign of forty-four 
years (769-813) not merely the stubborn tribes in Ger- 
many, the Frisians, the Saxons, the Thuringians, and tlie 
Bavarians, who had so long threatened with invasion the 
Frankish dominions (and it required thirty-three succes- 
sive campaigns to accomplish this object), but also the 
Slavonians beyond the Elbe, the Avars in Hungary, the 
Lombards in Italy, and the Saracens in Sj)ain. In all, 
he made fifty-three warlike expeditions ; and yet, strange 
to say, he appears to his modern admirers not as a mere 
conqueror for ambition's sake, as Hannibal and Alex- 
ander the Great in the ancient world, and Frederick the 
Great and Napoleon in the modern, but as guided on the 
whole by a truly defensive policy, his real object being 
in his rude way to restore permanently that peace and 
order of which the world stood so much in need, and by 
which it was the fond dream of the time it had once been 
governed. He knew but one way to bring about this 
result : first, by seeking these wild tribes in their own 
forests in Germany, and crippling there their power of 
invading and plundering his dominions, and, secondly, 
by converting them to Christianity; and the sword was 
regarded as an equally efficient weapon in both cases. 
The wars in which Charlemagne was engaged seem to 



RESEMBLANCE TO OTHER CONQUERORS 87 



have been, as I have said, carried on as national acts, 
and not merely from a desire to gratify personal am- 
bition. It seems strange to us to find Charlemagne 
propagating Christianity by giving the German tribes 
the alternative of belief or death by drowning, and 
jet even we may understand that it was a statesman- 
like way of protecting his own frontiers from invasion. 
To achieve what he did, he must have possessed almost 
superhuman activity and inflexible perseverance. It is 
said that a truly great man is one who has the loftiest 
conceptions of policy with the most painstaking atten- 
tion to details in carrying it out. This loftiness of the 
ideal and the attention to details must exist in combi- 
nation to produce the proper result. Such a peculiarity 
was eminently characteristic of Charlemagne, as it was 
of Julius Cnesar before, and of Napoleon (who always 
claimed the power and prerogatives of Charlemagne) 
after him. 

There are other resemblances between Napoleon and 
Charlemagne which are very striking, and some account 
of them may help us to understand better the great Em- 
peror. They both, for instance, made war support itself; 
that is, they took the resources of the conquered coun- 
tries to feed their armies. Charlemagne never paid his 
troops, nor provided for their needs; war was their busi- 
ness, their passion, and their means of living. So, in 
their campaigns, each of these conquerors strove to rouse 
the feeling of the population of the countries they in- 
vaded against their rulers, so that they might gain their 



88 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

ends by keeping alive such enmities. Divide and con- 
quer, was their motto. In urging the Poles and Italians 
to aid him in his wars in their countries, Napoleon was 
only strictly following the example of Charlemagne, 
who appealed to the down-trodden old races of Italy 
and Spain to rise against the Lombards and the Sara- 
cens. The parallel between these mighty men might 
be extended to other things, both to those in which they 
failed and to those in which they succeeded. It cer- 
tainly is not to be wondered at that a man who was the 
master of the larger portion of the territory of Europe, 
and who had conquered it from the motives and by the 
policy which we have described, should desire to consoli- 
date this rule in such a way as to mould the destiny of 
Europe for all time by that policy, and that he should 
have regarded the Roman Imperial system, modified by 
the pai)acy, as the best means of accomplishing his pur- 
pose. Certainly nothing is greater about Charlemagne 
or his age than this grand scheme of securing peace with 
order to the troubled world. If there was any hope 
at that time for the world, discoverable by the most 
penetrating foresight or the most ardent philanthropy, 
it lay in the revival of the Roman Empire. 

What means did Charlemagne adopt for ruling his 
vast possessions ? and upon what grounds does his fame 
as a great legislator and administrator rest? We must 
remember always that he ruled in a double capacity, not 
merely as King of the Franks, but also, at least after the 
year 800, as head of the Holy Roman Empire. Much 



CHARLEMAGNE AS EMPEROR AND KING. 89 

of the machinery of his legislation can only be properly 
understood by keeping in mind its double purpose. It 
is not easy to draw the line and say where his work as 
King of the Franks ended and that as Emperor began. 
The three great interests which he guarded especially 
seem to have been those of race, territory, and religion. 
To insure the stability of his policy in the Frankish 
kingdom was, no doubt, the chief end of the super- 
human activity he displayed. But his work in striving 
to introduce among the wild savages east of the Elbe the 
beginnings at least of an orderly government and some 
notions of Christianity, the substitution of his own rule 
for that of the Lombards and the Greeks in Italy, his 
maintenance of the frontier in Spain against the assaults 
of the Saracens, and, above all, his hearty co-operation 
with the Church in its efforts to follow up his conquests 
by extending its influence, — all these things, perhaps, 
fall strictly within what he considered as the proper 
sphere of his functions as Roman Emperor. But his 
work as the German King was quite as remarkable, as 
is proved by the complicated machinery of his legisla- 
tion. His capital and principal residence was at Aix-la- 
Chapelle, near Cologne. We must disabuse our minds 
of the idea that Charlemagne, because his people were 
called Franks, was in any sense, or ratlier in the modern 
sense^ French. He had nothing to do with the French, 
except as their conqueror. He was a German of the 
Germans. He was, moreover, in his own estimation, 
the world-monarch, from whom all earthly power was 

8* 



90 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

^lerived. His local government — that is, in his Ger- 
man domains — was administered by officers called, indif- 
ferently, dnkes, counts, vicars, scabini (echevins) ; and 
their business was, in thorough subordination to the 
master, to raise troops, to dispense justice, to maintain 
order, to gather the tribute, each within an allotted dis- 
trict. Besides these, there were certain beneficiaries to 
whom lands had been granted in various portions of the 
territory with the stipulation that they should aid the 
king in his government and his wars, and who, unlike 
the feudal lords, as most of their descendants became in 
due time, were not only legally but actually under the 
absolute control of the king. The marks or frontiers 
of the kingdom were governed by counts specially 
appointed. 

To these officers was added another class with peculiar 
functions. They were called mis8i dominiGl, or inspec- 
tors, appointed by the king, whose business it was to 
travel into the different portions of his empire with 
authority to ascertain whether his orders had been ob- 
served, and generally to correct abuses in the adminis- 
tration. There were also national assemblies held every 
year after the manner of the ancient Franks, called 
Champs de 31a7's, or later de Mai. These were gener- 
ally held at some central point in the kingdom, near the 
Rhine, and were attended by the freemen, who deliber- 
ated in two bodies, one composed of the higher nobility 
and clergy, and the other of those of lower rank. Ex- 
actly how far these assemblies controlled the legislation 



HIS LEGISLATION. 91 

of the kingdom is uncertain. It would appear that 
they were regarded by Charlemagne merely as an ad- 
visory body, from whom, especially, information was to 
be gained by which his own action was to be guided. 
In the legislation of that time, as in its wars, how^ever, 
Charlemagne is always the central figure. That legisla- 
tion is known to us as preserved in the Capitularies of 
Charlemagne, the word capitula being applied to the 
laws, decrees, or edicts, which were issued under his 
authority. During his reign of forty-four years no 
less than eleven hundred and twenty-six such capitula 
or distinct laws — six hundred and twenty-one relating 
to civil and four hundred and fifteen to religious legis- 
lation, and nearly one hundred to other subjects of public 
interest — were issued, more or less founded on the advi(^c 
and consent of the representatives of the nation in tlieir 
yearly assemblies. These capitula form a living picture 
of the society, civil, military, ecclesiastical, and uk ral, 
which gave them birth. It is impossible here to give 
any detailed or satisfactory account (and no account 
would be satisfactory unless it were in detail) of the 
spirit of this legislation. Many of these capitularies 
have been preserved, and I must refer those who desire 
more particularly to examine their character to M. 
Guizot's third volume of his History of Civilization 
in France. The impression made by such an exami- 
nation must be, I think, that, considering the circum- 
stances of the time, both before and after this era, 
the capacity for such enlightened legislation as is found 



92 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

in these capitularies, relating both to the civil and 
ecclesiaijtical affairs of the Empire, is little less than mar- 
vellous. Certainly they show that Charlemagne was not 
only one of the greatest conquerors but also one of the 
greatest law-givers the world has ever known. It may 
be interesting to remember that Napoleon, in this re- 
spect, resembled his great prototype, for he is said to 
have been prouder of his share in preparing the French 
civil code than of all his victories. 

Charlemagne's title to greatness — a title inseparably 
affixed by his contemporaries and by posterity to his 
very name — does not rest merely upon his having been 
a great warrior and a great statesman, but also upon 
his having been the most powerful advocate of the 
promotion of human learning the world has ever 
known. We hear it said that Charlemagne could not 
write his own name ; yet he composed Latin verses 
well, and the epitaph (in Latin) upon his friend Pope 
Adrian is one of the best of its kind so far as the 
Latinity is concerned. It is commonly said, too, that 
Charlemagne founded the university system of modern 
Europe; however that may be, it is certain that he 
established the schools attached to his own palace and 
to the cathedrals and monasteries, from which the 
modern university sprang. His friends and compan- 
ions were among the most learned and enlightened men 
of the time, and their affectionate remembrance has 
preserved for us a more living and real portrait of this 
wonderful man than we have of any one else who lived 



PATRON OF LEARNING. 



93 



a thousand years ago. His principal agent in his plans 
for the encouragement of learning, his intellectual prime 
munster, so to speak, was Alcuin, an Englishman, bred 
in the cathedral school in York, and for long yea.-s a 
celebrated teacher there. It is to be remembered that 
in those days of the decay of the old civilization on the 
contment, caused by wars and invasions, Ireland, Scot- 
land, and the North of England seem to have been the 
only places of refuge in Europe for learned men All 
the more distinguished early missionaries came, a^ is 
known, from these islands, principally from the monastic 
schools of Ireland and Scotland, and Alcuin, who was 
a scholar of the very highest order, was induced by 
Charlemagne to enter his service as early as 769. 

We may, I suppose, look upon the work of this great 
man at the court of Charlemagne as showing what wa, 
considered the highest form of human learning at that 
era, as well as the class of persons to whom it was tau<dxt 
It seems that Alcuin established his school in the Em" 
peror's palace, by his request, where he gave instruction 
lu grammar, rhetoric, jurisprudence, poetry, astronomv 
natural history, mathematics, and the explanation of 
the Holy Scriptures; and that among his scholars were 
not only the Emperor himself, but his children also 
-boys and girls,-some of his privy councillors, an,l 
at least two bishops. Besides this, he corrected and 
restored the text of ancient manuscripts, which had 
been much defaced by ignorant transcribers. He o-av 
particular attention to the revision of the text of'th 



2:ave 
e 



94 MEDL^VAL HISTORY. 

Holy Scriptures, a revision adopted by Charlemagne 
and ordered by him to be made the standard text 
throughout his dominions. It is difficult to say whether 
Charlemagne delighted most in warlike deeds or in his 
intercourse with learned men, in restoring manuscripts, 
and thus providing proper materials for study, in re- 
establishing schools, which had everywhere gone to 
decay, or in converting the heathen Saxons. 

There is a Charlemagne of history, a Charlemagne of 
legendary and popular fame, above all a Charlemagne 
of poetry, the type of the perfect Christian knight 
who, with the famous Roland and his twelve Paladins, 
fought against the Moslem in Roucesvalles. Through- 
out the Middle Age we hear constantly 

" the blast of that wild horn, 
On Fontarablan echoes borne, 

The dying hero's call, 
That told imperial Charlemagne 
How Paynim sons of swarthy Spain 

Had wrought his champion's fall." 

He was thus the ideal hero of his age, and he was looked 
upon during the Middle Age as the great restorer of 
whatever was true and valuable in Roman civilization. 
Even in this critical day his figure seems to those who 
carefully consider it as so imposing that no man, per- 
haps, who ever lived has been regarded by so many 
historians, ever since his time, as exhibiting the highest 
type of greatness in so many different departments of 
human activity. He shines out, too, perhaps, all the 



CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS RULE. 95 

more brilliantly as he was the one bright star of a 
very dark night. Both theologians and the writers of 
history, whether they consider modern European society 
founded upon an aristocratic or a popular basis, regard 
him as the incarnation of wisdom and of equity. Mon- 
tesquieu says of him, ^^He was great as a prince, but 
still greater as a man. No one who ever lived better 
understood the art of doing great things with ease, 
or difficult things with promptitude." Says another 
WTiter, " Charlemagne was a civilizing hero like Alex- 
ander the Great. Alexander made the East Greek, 
and Charlemagne the West Latin. They both worked 
for future ages, and the fire they lighted will never be 
extinguished." 

But, brilliant as was the civilization which this great 
man tried to establish in Europe, and profound as has 
been the recognition of his merits by posterity, we must 
not forget that there is another side of the picture, 
which we should study if we desire to gain an accurate 
idea of the practical value of the work of Charlemagne. 
We must see not only what he did, but also what he 
did not, or, rather, how far success attended his world- 
embracing schemes. In the first place, then, his central 
or Imperial system failed. It scarcely lasted longer than 
his own life. There were many reasons now very ap- 
parent for this, but it must suffice to name one which, 
in fact, includes them all, and that is, that the Teutonic 
tribes were wholly unfitted for a system of administra- 
tion which had, even among the comparatively civilized 



96 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

Romans, ended by eating out, like a cancer, the sources 
of their national life. 

In his attempt to introduce such a system among rude 
tribes just emerged from barbarism, Charlemagne en- 
tered into a conflict with the nature of man itself. He 
was not satisfied to bring his own hereditary dominions 
under the rule of peace and order, but he exhibited, in a 
marked degree, that characteristic which has been domi- 
nant in all the great rulers of mankind, whether they 
be called Alexander, Mohammed, or IN^apoleon, — viz., 
a rage Jot uniformity ^ which has been always inseparable 
from their ideal conception of public order and good 
government. All such attempts have failed, and, from 
the very nature of man, must fail. Ideal reconstruc- 
tions of society on such a basis have never succeeded. 
Hence, when his mighty hand was removed, the central 
authority, the national assemblies, the mksi dominici, 
all the complicated machinery of the Imperial system, 
having no other support, fell also, while the dukes, the 
counts, the vicars, the centenniers, remained, with totally 
different functions, under the decentralized rule which 
followed. 

But, it will be asked, did Charlemagne do nothing 
which remained for posterity and which was productive 
of permanent results in the history of Europe? Not to 
repeat here what I have already insisted upon at length, 
— that he finally rescued Europe from barbarism and 
helped forward the fusion of the Teutonic type of civ- 
ilization with that of the Roman, — his Empire, broken 



CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS RULE. 



97 



into separate states shortly after his death, was resolved 
into a multitude of local sovereignties. Yet even in 
these, far on in the Middle Age, while his policy of 
centralization was abandoned as impossible, the civil- 
izing influences of his rule and his example were never 
forgotten. Before his time, the frontiers of Germany, 
Spain, and Italy were constantly fluctuating, in itself a 
symptom of the restlessness of barbarism, while after 
his reign states more or less organized, and with fron- 
tiers more or less recognized, such as the kingdoms of 
Lorraine, of Germany, of Italy, and the two Burgun- 
dies, fulfilled the conditions of communities measurably 
well governed and civilized. 

Charlemagne is more especially the founder of mod- 
ern Germany. His influence, not only as the King of 
the Franks, but as Roman Emperor, is the source of 
much that is characteristic in the history of that coun- 
try ; and as we go on with our studies in that history we 
shall find that the influence and example of a truly 
great man are among the few things which never die. 



CHAPTER IV. 

:mohammed and his system in the middle age. 

No view of medlseval history can be satisfactory wliich 
does not embi^ace a sketch, at least, of the life and doctrines 
of Mohammed and of the rapid and extensive conquests 
of liis successors. The great social forces are mainly de- 
pendent, as history shows us, upon peculiarities of race 
and religion. The history of the mediseval age, as has 
been explained, is essentially one of the conflict of dif- 
ferent races and of opposite religious ideas and systems. 
It seems at first a strange paradox to assert that mod- 
ern history and modern civilization grew out of this 
very conflict. The result of the struggle was not the ex- 
haustion, as so often happens, of the opi)Osing forces, nor 
even the presence of diff'erent races on the same territory, 
each maintaining a distinct and separate life, with a mu- 
tual toleration of different religious beliefs, but rather an 
assimilation, gradual, but complete. We have studied 
the nature of this process in Central Europe after the 
fall of the Western Empire in 476, — the fusion, as we 
have called it, of the Roman with the barbarian, of the 
Christian with the heathen; and from this fusion we 
have endeavored to deduce the characteristic features of 
the typical modern European, and to recognize in this 
slow process the true source of all modern history. 

08 



BARBARIAN AND SARACENIC IDEAS. 99 

But, while our inquiries liave led us hitherto to ob- 
serve almost exclusively the successive steps in this work 
of assimilation and fusion in Europe, we have now 
reached a period where a conflict of races and creeds pro- 
duced a totally opposite result. In our study of the 
history of the Saracens we shall find these same elements 
of conflict, race and religion, but always repelling, never 
attracting each other. The Semitic and the Aryan, the 
Christian and the Moslem, have been from the beginninji:, 
as they are now, irreconcilable enemies. Our study of 
the conquests of the Saracens, unlike that of the con- 
quests of the Northern barbarians, will not show us, as in 
Central Europe, Christianity strengthened and purified 
and the true principles of civilization consolidated by the 
struggle for mastery, but rather Christendom despoiled 
by violence of lands around the basin of the Mediter- 
ranean, where the gospel was first planted. There it 
achieved its earliest and most signal triumphs, and in 
the eastern portion of that region Greek and Roman 
civilization have long been replaced by some of the most 
characteristic forms of Oriental despotism. 

The Saracenic invasions of Christendom differed from 
those of other formidable non-Christian people — such 
as those of the Huns and Mongols, for instance — in 
this, that the Saracens settled down and remained per- 
manently for ages in the conquered lands and established 
in them their peculiar civilization and religion. So far 
as I know, they have never lost that sort of control given 
by their religion and their special Orientalism in any 



100 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

country tliey ever conquered, save Spain; and it required 
eight hundred years to drive them out of that land, 
Catholic jynr exGellence. Conquests in history like those 
of Alexander, or of Charlemagne, or of Napoleon, or 
even of Rome itself, are usually so exhausting to the 
conquering nation that the rule they establish soon falls 
to pieces after the mighty hand of the conqueror has been 
removed. But the successors of Mohammed conquered 
a larger territory in fourscore years than Rome did 
in four hundred, and utterly supplanted and eifaced, 
wherever they went, that form of civilization founded 
upon Christianity and Roman law. Their race and 
their religion always proved insurmountable barriers 
to any fusion with the Christian people of the lands 
they subdued. The long duration and the extensive 
sway of the Moslems are, therefore, among the marvels 
of history. 

There is no romance equal in interest to the simple 
story of the early Saracenic conquests, for nowhere do 
the results seem so out of all proportion with the means 
used to achieve them, and those results changed perma- 
nently the face of the whole world. " Within the life- 
time of many an aged Arab," says Irving, "the Sara- 
cens extended their empire and their faith over the wide 
regions of Asia and Africa, subverting the empire of 
Chosroes, King of Persia, subjugating great territories in 
India, establishing a splendid seat of power in Syria, dic- 
tating to the conquered kingdom of the Pharaohs, over- 
running the whole northern coast of Africa, scouring 



AMBITION OF THE MOHAMMEDANS. IQl 



the Mediterranean with tlieir ships, carrying their con- 
quests in one direction to the very walls of Constantino- 
ple, and in another to the extreme limits of Mauritania, 
the modern Morocco and the ancient country of Jugur- 
tha and Micipsa, — in a word, trampling down all the 
old dynasties which once held haughty and magnificent 
sway in the East." And this was the beginning only of 
their career. In a few years afterwards they had con- 
quered all Spain, save the northern mountainous districts, 
and had overrun that portion of modern France south 
of the Loire and west of the Rhone. Their ambition 
and their religious enthusiasm were not satisfied even 
by these extensive conquests. They aspired to rule the 
whole of Western Europe, and to proclaim the religion 
of the Prophet from the sacred tomb of St. Peter at 
Rome itself; and we may speculate with curious interest 
upon what would have been the fate of Europe had not 
their career of conquest in that portion of the world 
been stopped and their invasion driven back by the 
illustrious Charles Martel and his Franks at the great 
battle of Poitiers, in 732. And even now, wdien tl^e 
relative power of Christendom and Islam has so greatly 
changed, and Mohammedan rule has long been iden- 
tified with everything which we regard as weak and 
evil and debasing in government, nothing is more sur- 
prising and inexplicable than the tenacity of life which 
is shown by the principal Mohammedan nation, Turkey, 
although the race which rules there is not Semitic, but 
1 uranian in its origin, and although its progenitors were 



102 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

among the later and least willing of the converts to the 
Moslem faith. 

Certainly, if there are any questions in history worth 
considering, they are such as these. What can have 
been the causes of these extraordinary results? Who, 
then, was Mohammed? What was his system of re- 
ligion and government? Under what circumstances did 
such a system take root in Arabia ? and what were the 
causes which made his disciples the leaders of a success- 
ful armed propagandism? What, in short, was Arabia, 
the country of the Prophet, at the time of Mohammed's 
appearance ? Geographically, it forms a triangular pen- 
insula, of which the base, nearly a thousand miles 
long, rests on the Indian Ocean, its apex reaching the 
confines of Syria. Of its two sides, the eastern is 
bounded by the Persian Gulf, and the western by the 
Red Sea. Its inhabitants have always been isolated 
from the rest of the world. It contained nothing to 
excite the cupidity of robber tribes, and its territory did 
not form a pathway to lands wdiere tlie prey was more 
tempting. A large portion of the country was a stony 
desert, uninhabited except by wild, wandering tribes; 
and even that district in the south, called by the ancients 
Arabia Felix, was poor in resources compared with Per- 
sia and Syria upon its borders, or indeed with the other 
Eastern lands that were afterwards subjugated by the 
Saracens. The Arabs claim to have been descended 
from the outcast Ishmael ; and, however that may be, 
their country appears in the remotest history as a land 



ARABIAN COMMERCE. \{){ 



of refuge to those of the surrounding countries who had 
been driven from their own by cruelty, persecution, or 
war. At the time of Mohammed a large number of 
refugees and their descendants, of various nationali- 
ties, were found there, each retaining in a certain 
measure its ancient manners, and especially its religious 
belief and ceremonies. Thus, to say nothing of others, 
there were at Mohammed^s appearance large settlements 
of Jews, at Medina, of Persians, who were disciples of 
Zoroaster, Magians, or fire- worshippers, and of Chris- 
tians who had been driven from S;yTia and perhaps from 
Egypt as heretics. 

The government of the Arab tribes was in the main 
patriarchal ; but families who had long been rich, and 
whose members held important positions in the public 
service, were regarded as entitled to high considera- 
tion. The principal business of those tribes who were 
not shepherds was that of commerce, for Avhich purpose 
(as commerce was carried on in those ages) the position 
of the peninsula of Arabia presented some peculiar ad- 
vantages. Their country was the best highw^ay for the 
trade wdiich has immemorially existed between the East 
and the AVest. Ships laden with spices, precious stones, 
and other coveted luxuries from Africa, India, and the 
farther East came to Aden, on the Red Sea, wlience 
their cargoes were carried by the Arabs on camels across 
the desert to the cities of Mesopotamia, or to Damascus, 
where they were exchanged for the grain of Syria or 
the silks woven in that country, which in turn were 



104 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

brought back across the desert and shipped to India. 
This trade had been carried on for ages before the time of 
Mohammed, — perhaps even in the time of Solomon. Its 
route througli the Arabian desert, as I liave said, was 
the great highway between the East and the West; and 
the business seems to have enriched all concerned in 
conducting it. The merchants in those days and in 
this region were evidently the most important inhab- 
itants ; and I know no more curious iUustration of this 
fact than that the future Prophet of Islam should first 
appear in history as a travelling salesman, a sort of agent 
for Cadijah, the woman whom he afterwards married, 
who had intrusted him with certain of her goods to be 
conveyed by caravan to Damascus and there to be sold on 
her account. We must not fail to remark here a more 
important result of this constant intercourse between 
Arabia and Persia and Syria, as affecting the mind of 
Mohammed, as well as those of his countrymen engaged 
in this trade; and that was the education they received 
by the acquaintance thus formed with foreign countries, 
and especially with foreign religions. 

When we come to consider the religious ideas prevail- 
ing among the Arabs at the time of the advent of Mo- 
hammed, it is not possible to regard them as forming a 
uniform, national, and recognized creed. It has been 
said that the original Arabians, like all the Semitic 
tribes, were monotheists; that they from the beginning 
had entertained that opinion concerning the infinite dis- 
tance existing between the power of the Creator and the 



ARABIAN RELIGIONS, 105 

nothingness of the creature, — absolute power on the 
one side and absolute submission on the other, — which 
forms the basis of Mohammed's doctrine. It is said, 
indeed, that Mohammed is only entitled to credit for 
having, by his teaching, revived tlie primal faith of 
his race. However that may be, it is certain, from 
causes which it would take too much time to discuss 
liere, that Arabia (if such a collection of tribes can 
be called a nation) at the time of Mohammed's birth 
was a nation of idolaters. Their form of idolatry was 
a very curious one. They had in the city of Mecca, 
which all the tribes agreed in recognizing as the Holy 
City, a temple called the Caaba, which they looked upon 
as sacred, as the seat of their national worship. Within 
this Caaba or temple, with a hospitality and toleration 
of which I know no parallel in the history of religious 
forms of worship, except perhaps in that of the Pan- 
theon at Rome, each tribe performed its own domestic 
and peculiar rites of worship in its own way, each of them 
being under the special protection of a different idol, the 
image either of a man or an eagle or a lion, until the 
whole number of these idols amounted to three hundred 
and sixty. This worship, in all the tribes, was accom- 
panied, on solemn occasions, by human sacrifices. This 
extraordinary diversity of belief and practice in religious 
worship among the people is very noticeable, for, when 
they became Mussulmans, with the abolition of idolatry 
they became absolutely fanatical in their monotheistic 
belief, and they never changed their horror of anything 



106 MEDIyEVAL HISTORY. 

approaching idolatry. This is only one indication, 
among many, of the great revolution in religious ideas 
wrought by Mohammed. With the forms of idolatry 
these tribes had all tlie vices which have invariably 
accompanied its practice in the East. When we hear 
the sensual paradise, the material hell, and the blind 
fatalism taught to his followers by the Prophet spoken 
of with horror, we must never forget the depth of 
degradation and superstition from which he succeeded 
in raising not merely his own countrymen, but vast 
numbers in other lands, with whose religious systems 
his own may be said to be, in contrast, purity itself. Be- 
sides the national form of worship, those of the Magians, 
the Jews, and the Christians were permitted. Our busi- 
ness now, however, is rather with the extraordinary 
power of propagandism which was developed by Mo- 
hammedanism, than with the interesting question of the 
nature of the religious beliefs wdiich previously existed 
in the country of its birth. How such a system as that 
of Mohammed could in so short a time become the 
triumphant creed it did, not merely in Arabia, but 
throughout Asia, overturning the ascendency of the long- 
established systems of Christianity, Magianism, Brah- 
manism, and Judaism throughout the East, can only be 
fully accounted for by taking into consideration the con- 
dition, political, social, and religious, of Arabia, and of 
the countries which were first invaded by the Saracens. 

In the year 630, which was the date of their first 
assault on the Roman, or, to speak more intelligibly, the 



WEAKNESS OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE. lo7 

Byzantine, power in Syria, the Roman Empire was in 
name and theory, at least, the same universal Empire it 
had been in the days of Augustus and Trajan. Prac- 
tically and in fact, however, the power of the Emperor 
at Constantinople was only really obeyed in the eastern 
portion of the Empire, composed of the provinces of 
Egypt and Syria and of that portion of Asia west of 
the Euphrates, all, at that time, most rich, populous, and 
fertile districts. The government of the West imposed 
a great burden and added nothing to the strength or re- 
sources of the Imperial government at Constantinople. 
In Spain, the Gothic raonarchs had taken advantage of 
the weakness of the Byzantine government to annex to 
their kingdom those portions of that country bordering 
on the Mediterranean which still recognized the govern- 
ment of the Eastern Emperor. In Gaul, the dynasty 
of Clovis, under Roman authority de jure and Erank- 
ish authority de facto, maintained its independent posi- 
tion. Northern Europe was still chiefly Pagan, the first 
step towards its conversion to the obedience of the Roman 
Church having been taken by sending Augustine and his 
monks to England about fifteen years before the first 
preaching of Mohammed. In Italy, the Exarch of 
Ravenna (representing the Imperial authority at Con- 
stantinople) and the Lombards divided the dominion of 
the country. The real Roman power existed only in the 
East : Asia Minor, Egypt, and Syria were its strongest 
supporters, and the resources of these provinces were 
employed, about the time of the coming of Mohammed, 



108 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

in defending, under Heraclius, what was left of the 
Koman authority in that quarter against the Persians. 

These provinces, especially Syria and Egypt, were not 
only the most fertile in resources yet left to the Empire, 
but their population was the most restless and most dis- 
contented of any with the policy pursued by the central 
government at Constantinople, especially with reference 
to the great question of the time in the East, — the re- 
ligious question. The dominant party in both these 
provinces, which included the lands in which Chris- 
tianity had been earliest planted, were in the eyes of 
the authorities at Constantinople heretics, — that is to 
say, they dissented from the declarations of the creed of 
Nic8ea in regard to the Trinity. This creed was consid- 
ered by the Emperor and by his clergy as the foundation 
of the true faith, and it was ordered to be observed by 
all his subjects as such. These provinces, as we need not 
say, were among the most ancient seats of the highest 
civilization in the world. Six hundred years before 
Christ they had formed part of that great Macedonian 
Empire under Alexander the Great and his successors, 
which had scattered broadcast the seeds of Greek cul- 
ture, the growth of which changed the whole current 
of Oriental ideas and history. In the palmiest days of 
the Empire they were its most flourishing provinces. 
In them were to be found some of the most famous 
cities of antiquity : Alexandria, the entrepot of the 
world's commerce, the seat for so many ages of tlie 
Greek philosophy, and the home of so many Hellenized 



CHRISTIAN HERETICAL SECTS. 109 

Jews and of Christian heretical sects; Antioch, the rich 
and proud capital of Syria on the coast, where the " dis- 
ciples were first called Christians;" Jerusalem, the holy; 
Damascus, the beautiful ; Ephesus, the city of Diana ; to 
say nothing of many less noted cities, the long-settled 
centres of wealth and luxury, outgrowths for the most 
part of Greek colonization, forming a district whose 
population was more highly cultured in the Greek sense 
than any other on the earth's surface. These cities early 
embraced Christianity; but with them it was not, as 
among the sober and practical people of the West of 
Europe, adopted simply as a rule of life, but rather, with 
that disputatious temper so characteristic of the GreelvS, 
and still more so of Hellenized Orientals, it became a 
pretext for perpetual abstract metaphysical speculation. 

These cultured people Avere among the most zealous 
professors of Christianity and the worst illustrations of 
its practical lessons. With that free temper which was 
characteristic of minds trained in the Greek schools of 
thought, they eagerly discussed all its peculiarities, and 
soon moulded it into forms adapted to Greek philosoph- 
ical systems, regardless of the charge of heresy con- 
stantly made by the orthodox at Rome and at Constan- 
tinople. With the nice shades of distinction in regard 
to the nature of Christ, and other speculative opinions 
concerning Christian dogmas, which are involved in 
this controversy, we have here nothing to do, except 
to say that the controversy itself served as a pretext 
for the Christians in Syria and Egypt, under the 

10 



110 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

name of Nestorians and Jacobites, not merely to de- 
clare their independence of the Church authority at 
Constantinople, but also to breed disloyalty to the gov- 
ernment which supported that authority and which in 
their minds was inseparably associated with it. The 
business of government, in the opinion of these sectaries, 
was to preserve the faith. Thus the heart of both Syria 
and Egypt was thoroughly disloyal to the Imperial gov- 
ernment long before Mohammed proclaimed his faith, 
and their inhabitants were doubtless ripe for revolt at 
that time and waited only for a suitable pretext. 

As to the military resources and power of the Empire, 
which seem to have melted away at the first shock of 
the onslaught of the Saracens, it may be proper to say a 
few words. The country was still part of the Eoman 
Empire, and its troops formed a Roman army, but they 
were as unlike the formidable legions which ages before, 
under Pompey and Caesar, had reduced Syria and Egypt 
to the obedience of Rome, as the power they represented 
was shorn of that prestige of victory which had so long 
attended the standard which marked the proud authority 
of Senatus populusque Romanus. The Roman army at 
the time of Heraclius and Mohammed was a motley assem- 
blage, made up of men from all tribes, both within and 
without the Empire, slaves and strangers chiefly, and 
without any of that deep-seated instinct of nationality 
which in former ages had rendered Rome invincible. 
Discipline and numbers, so long as the pay was regularly 
made, were still there, and the art of war, but faith and 



WEAKNESS OF THE ROMAN ARMY. \\\ 

enthusiasm were not. These men served only as merce- 
naries, and the luxurious habits of the cities of the East 
where the legions were stationed, and the practice of 
conciliating them by large donatives, had greatly weak- 
ened their highest military qualities. They had, just 
before the a})pearance of Mohammed, been engaged in 
constant wars with Persia, and in mutinies for increased 
privileges, but until Heraclius took the bold step of at- 
tacking the capital of that country and forced its armies 
to retreat from Syria, the Roman troops in Asia had 
been constantly defeated by those of the great king. 
They had lost Aleppo, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and were 
forced back across the Hellespont, the Persians being 
able to establish themselves on the plains of Chalcedon, 
almost within sight of the walls of Constantinople. 
Egypt, the only Roman province which had been 
exempt from foreign war since the time of Diocletian, 
fell, too, before the power of the Persian king, Chosroes, 
or Nushirvan. From the danger which by these con- 
quests threatened the existence of the Empire it was 
delivered by the genius and valor of Heraclius, one of 
the greatest and least known names in Roman history ; 
but, although his exploits recall her proudest days, from 
them came no sustained military power capable of re- 
sisting the progress of the Saracens. These wars, w^aged 
to determine the ascendency of the Romans or Persians 
in the East, lasted more than twenty years, and are of 
interest to us now only as showing the absolute ex- 
haustion of the resources of those enemies from whom 



112 MED LEVA L HISTORY. 

Mohammed had most to fear ; for doubtless at that very 
time he was meditating the extension of his religion by 
an armed propagandism. The only effectual barrier 
against the invasion of Eastern Europe by tlije Saracens, 
which remained as such unconquered for more than eight 
hundred years, was the Imperial city of Constantine, 
which resisted until the year 1453 the repeated and 
determined efforts of both the Saracens and their succes- 
sors the Ottoman Turks to reach the heart of Europe 
over its ruins. 

Such, then, being briefly the condition of the country 
of Mohammed and of the Byzantine and Persian mon- 
archies at the time of his coming, we are ready to ask 
who and what this man was by whom a new era was to 
be opened, and by whose teachings the condition of this 
part of the world was to be so suddenly and so com- 
pletely changed. Mohammed was born in the year 569, 
of the noblest race in Arabia, — that of the Koreish, to 
whom belonged the hereditary guardianship of the 
Caabay the principal temple, as I have explained, of the 
national worship, in which, at the time of his birth, no 
less than three hundred and sixty idols were objects of 
worship by as many tribes and were regarded by them 
as their tutelary deities. Mohammed was forty-one years 
old before he publicly claimed to be a prophet of God. 
There is nothing mysterious about his early life. He 
was first a shepherd, and then a tradesman, and by his 
virtues and by his capacity as a business-man succeeded 
in marrying the rich woman, Cadijah, in whose employ 



MOHA MM ED'S EA RL V LIFE. 113 

lie was, and she repaid his devotion by becoming his first 
convert. He seemed at first a very commonplace person. 
He was in the habit, like many other earnest men, of 
retiring to secret places to pray ; and he was overcome 
with sadness as he meditated upon the evils of this world, 
and especially when he saw how his countrymen were 
wholly given to idolatry. But his soul was deeper and 
his spirit was more earnest than those of other men : 
hence he felt that soul stirred from its lowest depths by 
a voice which he recognized as unmistakably the voice 
of God. Mohammed's early life was filled with visions, 
— revelations as he called them, the delusions of hysteria 
and catalepsy as his enemies claim. It is impossible 
here to give all the reasons for the belief that to Moham- 
med these visions were in very truth realities; that he 
was entirely sincere and earnest in his belief that he had 
heard the voice of God ; that he was indeed inspired in 
the same sense as some of the most illustrious characters 
in history have been, — Socrates, for instance, or Joan of 
Arc, or Swedenborg, or even the great Cromwell. This 
voice proclaimed to him the great dogma, " That there 
was but one God, and that Mohammed was the Prophet 
of God.'' Like all men who are in earnest about the 
truth that is in them, he set about making converts. 
Long years passed before he could gather more than a 
mere handful. They consisted of his wife and of some 
of his near relatives. But during all this time he was 
fiercely persecuted and his life threatened by members of 
the Korelsh tribe. Such was his position for more than 

10* 



114 MEDL^EVAL HISTORY. 

twelve years ; and as, of course, he could not have fore- 
seen the brilliant success which awaited his plans in the 
future, as indeed there is nothing to show that he ever 
dreamed of such success, he must have been supported 
by an earnest belief in the reality of his mission, when 
he felt strong enough to carry it on in the loneliness and 
contempt to which he seemed doomed. 

We must not forget that in this early part of his career 
he professed that his object was to restore the universal 
religion which had been taught men from the beginning, 
the absolute unity of God, the religion of all true patri- 
archs and prophets. Its one duty was, according to him, 
Islam, or submission to the Divine will. Its worship 
was prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and pilgrimage. Among 
a people steeped in superstition, the source of the darkest 
vices, he taught, as the basis of his system for practical 
life, charity, justice, and chastity, and the duty to do and 
bear everything for the truth. He preached the essential 
unity and equality of the human race, and tiie folly of 
setting up distinctions among men, as if they could be 
recognized in the sight of God. It is said that a sort of 
leaven of monotheism has always pervaded the Arabian 
race from the time of Abraham and of Ishmael, and that 
Mohammed's system has on that account no claim to origi- 
nality. But he made no sncli claim ; he knew, as all great 
founders of religion have known, that the true prophet 
is he who proclaims a doctrine which best meets the 
spiritual needs of a race at a particular time, or at least 
the one who can see clearly in what direction they tend. 



HIS DOCTRINES. 115 

Mohammed taught that there had been in the history of 
the world successive revelations of God to the human 
race, and that each was higher and fuller than the one 
which preceded it. Abraham, Moses, and Christ were to 
him, as they are to his followers to this day, true prophets, 
but he was last and best of all. He never claimed to be 
infallible; he was conscious that he might make, and 
even that he often did make, mistakes, but he never lost 
faith in his mission, and he always believed that the 
words he spoke came from God. He never claimed him- 
self, although his followers have done so for him, the 
power of working miracles, although he insisted that he 
was so filled with the inspiration of the Almighty during 
his visions that strength was given him to proclaim and 
execute the will of God. He, like the Fathers of the 
Christian Church, believed that miracles might be 
wrought by others, but, like them, he never laid claim 
to any other miraculous power save that inspiration which 
enabled him to teach true doctrine. 

Mohammed's career may be divided into three epochs. 
1. That of his conversion, his proclamation of his doc- 
trine, and his consequent persecution. To this epoch 
doubtless belong the highest and truest enthusiasm of 
his nature, and the corresponding purity and blameless- 
ness of his life. 2. When his religion had gained many 
adherents, and there was a prospect of its becoming the 
religion of all the Arabian tribes, Mohammed seems to 
have been in a certain sense intoxicated with his tri- 
umph. Changes for the worse appear in some of his 



116 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

moral teachings, as shown especially in the revelation 
which he claimed to have received dispensing him from 
the observance of the law in regard to the limited num- 
ber of wives permitted to his disciples, and in that still 
greater change, which has seemed to so many the fatal 
objection to the sincerity of his belief, the advocacy of 
the use of the sword in extending his doctrine, not only 
as an act lawful in itself, but as the imperative duty of 
all his true followers. 3. The epoch in which Arabia 
was converted to Islam. It was then taught by Mo- 
hammed that his religion was a universal one, and that 
it should be spread throughout the world by means of 
an armed propagandism, and that with this object iu 
view other nations. Christian and Pagau, should be 
offered the alternatives of conversion, tribute, or de- 
struction by the sword. There was a manifest deterio- 
ration both in the character of the Prophet and of his 
religion during these successive epochs. His system was 
degraded and defiled, as all religious systems are, by 
a resort to force to secure their ascendency. The Mo- 
hammedanism of history, especially when it became the 
faith of a race so alien to all the characteristics of the 
Semitic as that of the Ottoman Turks, is a very differ- 
ent and very much less pure system than that pro- 
claimed by the Prophet himself. Yet, bad as many 
features of Islam are in history, still no one can doubt 
that it is a much better and more rational system in 
maijy respects than many of the religions it supplanted 
in the course of its conquests. It is certainly to be 



MOHAMMED NOT AN IMPOSTOR. 117 

preferred to the Arabian idolatry, to the fetichism of 
Africa, to the weakness and fruitlessness of Byzantine 
speculations about Christianity, and to the decayed 
beliefs of Persia and India. 

It seems to me that Ave should be cautious in follow- 
ing the example of the old writers by calling Moham- 
med an impostor, and speaking of his religion as a 
success simply because it gratified sensual appetites. 
We must remember that there is no mystery or legend 
blinding us about Mohammed's early life and teach- 
ings, as there is about Boudha, for instance, and the 
Brah manic cosmogony. AYe know almost as much of 
him as we do of Luther or of Milton. He, of all 
others, stands in "the fierce white light which shines 
upon a throne," and by that light his greatness and his 
weakness are equally conspicuous. And as to the attract- 
iveness of his religion, made so by its giving a sanc- 
tion to the gratification of self-indulgent or sensual ap- 
petite, let the indignant comment of Voltaire (no friend 
of Mohammed) be a sufficient answer : " Oh, canons, 
monks, parish priests even," he exclaims, " if any one 
forced you to submit to a law that you should eat and 
drink nothing from four o'clock in the morning till 
ten at night during Lent, supposing that fast to occur in 
the month of July, if you were forbidden to play at any 
game of chance under penalty of eternal damnation, if 
the use of wine was interdicted to you under the same 
penalty, if you were obliged to make pilgrimages across 
burning deserts, if you were required to give one-tenth 



118 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

of your income to the poor, if, having been accustomed 
to eighteen wives, fourteen were suddenly taken from 
you, — if, I say, such a religion was presented to you, 
I do not think you would dare to call it a sensual 
religion." 

The Koran is the sacred book of the Mussulmans, and 
its text, ipsissima verba, the infallible guide of their 
lives. Mohammed claimed that the law as revealed 
in this book was the actual word of God, and that 
he was the mere channel by which that word was 
conveyed to the world, or, at most, the editor of the 
book. The fragments of the Koran, which are in a 
somewhat disconnected and incoherent form, were pro- 
duced by Mohammed at his discretion, and as occa- 
sion seemed to require, in his sermons and discourses. 
They were recorded by his adherents on such strangely 
perishable materials as the shoulder-bones of shee}), 
oyster-shells, and the like, and were, two years after the 
death of Mohammed, collected and published by his suc- 
cessor, Abubeker. This book is made up of what are 
regarded by the Moslems as absolute verities; but its 
teachings are supplemented, as in all religions, by the life 
and example of the founder. The sayiligs of Mohammed 
to them are so many lessons of wisdom, his acts so many 
examples of virtue. 

The propagation of Mohammed's religion on a large 
scale began at the epoch known among the Arabians 
as the " Plegira,'^ which marks the period of the flight 
of Mohammed and his companions from Mecca and 



Tf!E CONVERSION OF THE ARABS. 119 

their taking refuge at Medina. This was in July, a.d. 
622. A considerable number of the people at Medina, 
including many Jews resident tliere, were ready to 
receive as their prophet and leader the outcast from 
Mecca, with his followers, and to aid him in spreading 
his rule and doctrine over the whole of Arabia, and 
especially over the members of his own tribe, the Ko- 
reish, who had driven him from Mecca. From this time 
forth the tone of Mohammed's action became wholly 
changed. Force was substituted for persuasion, and a 
new revelation from God was invoked to give it sanc- 
tion. It is true that the choice of friendsliip or of sub- 
mission was proposed to the enemies of Mohammed; but 
there was no backwardness in the application of military 
force to secure his object when any hesitation was ap- 
parent. " Tke sword,'' said the Prophet, " is the key of 
heaven and hell ; a drop of blood shed in the cause of 
God, a night sj)ent in arms, is of more avail than two 
months of fasting and prayer: whosoever falls in battle, 
liis sins are forgiven; at the day of judgment his wounds 
shall be resplendent as vermilion and odoriferous as 
musk.'' In this way his functions as king and as 
})rophet became inseparable, and after a few years of 
lighting with his old tribe and with the Jews of Arabia 
they became not only his subjects, but his converts also. 
This is a very striking feature not only of Mohammed's 
wars, but of those of all the Caliphs. At first sight 
nothing is more extraordinary in history than that a 
few wandering and obscure tribes in such a distant. 



120 medijEval history. 

sparsely-peopled land as that of Arabia should in a few 
years march through the most civilizcvl portion of three 
continents as conquerors; but when we remember that 
Mohammed's appeal was to the united force of two of 
the most powerful motives which swayed human action 
in those days, — superstition and a love of war, — we 
gain a glimpse at least of the causes of the military 
successes of the Saracens, although it must be confessed 
that there are few events in history more difficult of 
a full and satisfactory explanation than this. His own 
country subdued to his faith and rule, Mohammed, just 
before his death, prepared for the future destiny of 
Islam. 

His first step towards securing the permanent extension 
of his rule, both as prophet and as king, had been, as we 
have seen, to gain the union and co-operatimi of the wild 
tribes of his own country. Exactly in what proportions 
his military success over those whom he called rebels, 
and the fanatical devotion to his creed with which he 
inspired them, effected this object, it is not easy to say. 
In the year 632 — the year of his death — he felt himself 
strong enough at home to defy the power of the Greek 
and Persian monarch s and to send to each of them a 
message inviting both to profess the truths of Islam. 
If we did not know the result, we should be inclined 
to regard such a proceeding as the act of a madman : 
as such, indeed, the King of Persia, the great King 
of Kings, the successor of Cyrus, seems to have con- 
sidered it, for he tore up the paper which contained the 



ARMED PROPAGANDISM. 121 

summons, whereupon he was told by the indignant and 
undaunted messenger that in such a manner his own 
kingdom would be destroyed by the followers of the 
Prophet. The Greek Emperor, Heraclius, seems to have 
treated a similar message with more courtesy, for he is 
said to have listened to it with great, and probably 
amused, curiosity. But of course there could be no 
agreement between Islam and Christianity or the creed 
of Zoroaster, and a divided rule, much less the fusion 
of such elements, was impossible. Foreign conquest 
was evidently the settled policy of Mohammed before 
his death, for thus only could his system be propagated. 
It became, by reason of the triumphs of his successors, 
as much a characteristic of his religion, as long as it 
maintained its vitality, as the belief in the unity of 
God and the apostleship of the Prophet. 

It was the combined force of fanaticism and disci- 
pline which produced the wonderful results of those 
campaigns which made the Moslems victorious over the 
old systems. It was not alone intense and intolerant 
fanaticism for the spread of their religious ideas. They 
gave from the beginning to all their enemies of different 
religions the choice of embracing Islam or of paying a 
tribute and retaining their own faith. Fancy the Cru- 
saders, or, in later times, the Puritans, making such 
a compromise of what they believed to be the truth ! 
If the Saracens had been zealots such as these, they 
would have sought to exterminate Christianity in the 

lands they conquered. And yet doubtless their brilliant 

11 



122 MEDIyEVAL HISTORY. 

exploits, especially in the beginniDg, were clue in a great 
measure to their blind faith in that religion of which 
absolute fatalism was the basis. They hesitated at first, 
some of them, to undertake the campaigns in Syria and 
Persia: the odds were too great, the danger appalling, 
the weather too hot. " Hot !" exclaimed the undaunted 
Prophet; "hell is hotter; and as to danger, it is a})- 
pointed unto all men once to die, and for those who die 
in battle fighting for the faith the unspeakable joys of 
Paradise are ready and prepared." Whatever may have 
been the cause, it is clear that in all the early cam- 
paigns of the Saracens there was a conspicuous union 
of the blindest fanaticism with the sternest discipline, 
and to this their unchecked career of victory is chiefly 
due. Whenever we see such a combination in history 
(which is very seldom), as, for instance, in the case of 
CromwelFs regiments and the Covenanters in Scotland, 
it seems the condition of assured success. 

In this way only can we account for the fact that 
during ten years of the reign of Omar (the second in 
succession to the Prophet) the Saracens conquered thirty- 
six thousand cities or castles, destroyed four thousand 
churches or temples of unbelievers, and built fourteen 
hundred mosques for their worship. One hundred years 
after his flight from Mecca, the rule of the successors 
of the Prophet extended from the mouth of the river 
Indus to the Atlantic Ocean, and from the frontier of 
Cliina to the Red Sea, embracing a very considerable 
portion of two continents, and the oldest and most 



CAMPAIGNS OF THE ARABS. J 23 

civilized portions of the earth's surface^ — Persia, Syria, 
Egypt, Africa, and Spain. 

The Romans, with prudent caution, never undertook 
more than one war of conquest at a time ; the Saracens, 
in their impetuous eagerness, did not hesitate to attack 
in one campaign the strongest military powers then exist- 
ing, — the Greek Empire and Persia. 

In the very year of Mohammed's death (632) the 
Saracens, under the command of Khaled, the ^' sword of 
God," as he was called, advanced to the Euphrates, and, 
after various minor victories, they defeated the Persians 
in the desperate battle of Cadesia in 636, and thus de- 
cided the fate of the empire of Cyrus. The immediate 
result was the permanent occupation of the country 
between the Euphrates and the Tigris, known to the 
ancients as Assyria and Mesopotamia, and even then one 
of the most fertile and populous districts in Asia. With 
that extraordinary keenness of the commercial instinct 
so strong among the Arabs, they did not forget in their 
religious zeal to take time to establish there a seaport, 
Bassorah, which has been ever since, in all the vicissitudes 
of history, and even now is, a most important entrej)6t 
of commerce in that part of the world. What a com- 
mentary upon human motives and human ambition ! 
Nineveh the proud, Babylon the great, Ctesiphon the 
advanced post of Greek culture in those regions, Bagdad 
the gorgeous city of the Caliphs, are all gone, while 
Rameses, and Cyrus, and Alexander, and Haroun-al- 
Raschid are known to us now chiefly as examples of the 



124 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

vanity of human greatness; and yet this little trading- 
post of Bassorah has been kept alive while all around 
has fallen, and that by a motive more potent with man- 
kind in the long ran than the love of glory or of power, 
— the love of making money. 

But the Saracens soon pushed on beyond the Tigris, 
northward and eastward, until they reached the Caspian 
Sea, conquering many famous cities on their route. Not 
satisfied with this, they advanced yet farther, occupying 
Khorassan, the country between the Caspian and the 
river Oxus; and in twelve years from the time when the 
holy war was begun, the rule of the Caliph was extended 
far beyond the Oxus to the frontier of China, and to 
those regions towards the north then inhabited by a race 
whose children centuries afterwards, under the name of 
Ottoman Turks, were to be the successors of the Arabs 
and the Saracens and to represent in Europe the armed 
force and power of Islam. 

Contemporaneously with the war in Persia came the 
war in Syria against the Greek Emperor, the ruler of 
what was left of the Roman Empire in the East. In 
six years, ending in 638, that famous country was wholly 
conquered by the Saracens. Bozrah, Damascus, Baalbec, 
fell in the same year; the next year witnessed the fall of 
Jerusalem ; in 638 Aleppo and Antioch became tributary 
cities; and for more than three hundred years the Roman 
province in which Christ was born rested as completely 
under the rule of the infidel as Arabia itself. Egypt 
was the next country which yielded to the irresistible 



ARAB CONQUESTS. 125 

force of the Saracens, and, as they were aided by the good 
will at least of the native Christians, who held the au- 
thorities at Constantinople in abhorrence, there was little 
resistance offered except by the garrison at Alexandria. 
The burning of the famous library of that most illus- 
trious city by order of the Caliph is a story which rests 
upon a somewhat doubtful authority ; but if it be au- 
thentic the act was one of blind fanaticism, and imitated, 
it is sad to say, later by the Christians themselves, for the 
Spaniards after the capture of Granada in 1492 brought 
from every corner of Spain Arabic books and burned 
them all, so as to make of their destruction a magnificent 
auto-da-fe. It is said that more than a million and a 
half of volumes were consumed by fire on this occasion. 

Egypt conquered, the Saracens pursued their course 
westward along the Mediterranean, subduing the Roman 
province of Africa, more Koman in the days of the de- 
cline of the Empire tlian Italy itself, adding, after a 
long struggle, ancient Carthage and Mauritania as far as 
the shores of the Atlantic to their dominions. 

In the year 710, the same year in which their co-re- 
ligionists conquered that portion of India called Scinde, 
the basin of the great river Indus, the Saracens crossed 
the Straits of Gibraltar into Spain, and in one battle 
completely destroyed the Visigothic power in at least 
three-fourths of that country. They remained there 
nearly eight hundred years. Of their history in that 
country, especially of the character of their civilization 

in contrast with that of Christendom, we shall speak 

11* 



126 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

hereafter. Bat for the present we must leave the won- 
derful story of the Saracenic conquests, merely observ- 
ing, as a clue to guide us to the secret of their persistent 
influence in history, that amidst tlie varied fortunes of 
the Caliphate, divided and distracted as it became by 
revolutions in the course of time, the Moslems, amidst 
all their dissensions, agreed at least in this grand pro- 
fession of faith with which they began : ^' There is but 
one God, and Mohammed is the Prophet of God/^ 



CHAPTER Y. 



MEDIEVAL FRANCE. 



We turn now from the East to the West, — from what 
seems the permanent triumph of Islam in Asia and 
Africa to the slow and hesitating advance of the Chris- 
tian Church in taming the wild tribes of Western 
Europe, — from the story of the wonderful conquests 
upon which the assured strength of the Saracens was 
founded, to a study of the causes of that weakness, dis- 
solution, and decay which we meet everywhere in the 
Empire founded by Charlemagne, and which were rap- 
idly developed under the rule of his descendants. No 
contrast in history is more striking than that thus pre- 
sented between a decaying Empire built up with Chris- 
tianity as its recognized basis, and the strength and pride 
of conquest of the Saracens, who, stimulated by their 
intense religious faith, had been able, after a struggle of 
a few years, not only to uproot Christianity in the lands 
where it was first planted and where its growth had 
been from the beginning most vigorous, but also utterly 
to arrest the development of the peculiar ideas of that 
})ortion of mankind in whom rested, as we can now see, 
the hope of the future of the human race. 

If we could transport ourselves for a moment to 

those days of unlooked-for weakness and misery, and 

127 



128 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

knowing nothing of the fnture, save that there existed a 
universal belief that the year 1000 was to witness the end 
of the world, we should probably be forced to agree with 
the many sad, thoughtful, and puzzled Christian men of 
that time, who, looking round them and recognizing the ' 
triumph of the false Prophet on every hand, were sorely 
tried to explain how, in accordance with God's promise, 
the failure of Christianity and of Christian civilization 
and the triumph of Mohammedanism could coincide 
w^ith the consummation of all things. Never, it seems 
to me, did the actual condition of the race in Western 
Euro[)e seem one of greater degradation and misrule, 
or one more hopeless for the future, than it was between 
the date of the death of Charlemagne and that of the 
election of Hugh Capet as King of France (814-987). 
Yet the lesson which this era (which we propose to 
study in this chapter) teaches is that out of the confu- 
sion, chaos, and anarchy of those days grew, in a very 
important sense, modern Europe, with all its character- 
istic civilization, and this other lesson, that the only 
things that are never permanently obscured in history, 
although our eyes may be darkened to them for genera- 
tions, are the providence of God and human progress. 
Illustrating this principle in a remarkable degree, we 
shall find that the triumphs of the Saracens, rapid, 
brilliant, and remarkable in many respects as they were, 
withered away because they had no depth of root, while 
the civilization of the West, founded on Christianity 
and the Roman law leavened by barbarian ideas, grew 



THE DREAM OF CHARLEMAGNE. 129 



all the more vigorously and sturdily because it grew 
slowly, and was made tougher and more enduring by 
the very storms which beat against it. 

The dream of Charlemagne in establisliing his Em- 
pire was, as will be remembered, twofold. He wished 
to bring under a subjection similar to that of the 
Eoman Empire all the various races inhabiting the 
wide territories which he had inherited or which he 
had conquered, and for that purpose he strove to es- 
tablish a system of centralization in the administration 
of his government like that which had been adopted 
by the Roman Emperors in the government of their 
various provinces. This grand scheme proved, as I 
have said, a dream only, partly fulfilled, perhaps, while 
the iron hand of the great master held together the 
heterogeneous mass of which his dominions were com- 
posed; but no sooner was he dead than the Impe- 
rial system, with its principle of centralization, fell 
to pieces. We cannot explain here all the causes of 
this catastrophe. It will readily be understood that 
they are to be looked for in the totally dissinailar condi- 
tion of the population of the Roman and of the Frank- 
ish Empire. The only thing in which they resembled 
each other, as it appears to our eyes, was the extent of 
territory over which the chiefs of these two Empires 
ruled respectively. Charlemagne's Empire extended 
from the Elbe to the Ebro, and from the German Ocean 
to nearly the southern limit of Italy. The only unity 
of organization which the wild tribes and the subject 



130 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

populations which inhabited this vast territory were then 
fitted for was that brought about by enforced submission 
to the conqueror. It was not, as in the Roman Empire 
even when it had reached its widest limits, an outgrowth 
of willing subjection to Roman law and a reverence for 
the Roman name and authority on the part of the con- 
quered. We find rather among them the persistent love 
of independence so characteristic of all the German 
tribes, the habit of appealing to force alone to accom- 
plish their ends, an incapacity to conceive of that sub- 
mission to law as the supreme rule which formed the 
real strength of the Roman government in its conquered 
territories, — barbarism, in short, which, too ignorant to 
comprehend, despised all the refinements of that cen- 
tralized administration wdiich Charlemagne, in his blind 
admiration of the Roman system, hoped to restore. 

The only surviving son and successor of Charlemagne 
is known in French history as Louis le Debonnaire, 
and in German as Louis the Pious. He seems to have 
exhibited the instincts and character of a monk, rather 
than those of a King or of an Emperor. His life was 
passed in acts of devotion to the Church and in quarrels 
with his sons, who desired during his lifetime that their 
future patrimony should be divided among them. Each 
of these sons seems to have been characterized by jeal- 
ousy of the others, showing itself as much by^ struggles 
to secure the largest share of his dominions as by a 
common contempt for their unfortunate father. Twice 
was that father deposed by these sons because he could 



DEGENERACY OF HIS DESCENDANTS. 131 



not or would not yield his authority to them ; and he was 
harassed to that degree that he was only too glad to look 
forward to the cloister as a refuge from tlieir cruelty. 
Nothing could show more completely the depth of the 
degradation to which the son of Charlemagne had fallen, 
and his unlikeness to his father, as well as the rapid 
degeneracy of the government of the great Emperor in 
his hands, than the willingness of Louis to retire to a 
monastery and take the vows of a monk; for by so 
doing he gave up that which had been in all /oruier 
times the great source of pride to the true Frankish 
chief,— the right to be a leader of his countrymen in 
battle. The burden which his great father had borne 
so easily crushed him utterly. He was the submissive 
servant of the Church; but the preservation of the 
Imperial power in the family of Charlemagne was too 
important to her interests to allow us to suppose that 
she encouraged his extraordinary pusillanimity and un- 
Franklike conduct. The outlying and subject popula- 
tions in Germany and Spain were not long in discover- 
ing that the mighty hand of Charlemagne no longer 
governed them, and the Slaves, the Avars, the Arabs, 
and the Northmen broke out in revolt against the 
authority of the new Emperor. Louis made various 
unsuccessful attempts to arrange such a partition of his 
territories auiong his sons as would prove satisfactory to 
them. They had no other effect except to bring the 
Imperial power into contempt. Owing to the weakness 
of tlie central authority, the bonds which had kept the 



132 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

Empire together became rapidly loosened. Many of 
the greater nobles took the opportunity, in defiance of 
the Emperor, to enlarge the boundaries of those bene- 
fices which had been confided to them by Charlemagne. 
The result of all these movements, due, perhaps, quite 
as much to the feeble character of the monarch hiuiself 
as to the unfitness of the system of Charlemagne for 
such a rude age, was that the Empire of 840, the date 
of the death of Louis, was as unlike that of 814, the 
date of Charlemagne's death, as a man who is mori- 
bund is unlike the same man in full health and vigor. 
History hardly shows so rapid a decay of a great po- 
litical system. 

The partition made by Louis le Debonnaire, or the 
Pious, of his Empire among his three sons not having, 
as I have said, proved satisfactory to any of them, the 
settlement was left to the arbitrament of war. And it 
is curious to remark that the Church, in its anxiety 
to terminate the manifold sufferings endured by the 
populations throughout his dominions from the per- 
petual quarrels of those who were striving in arms for 
the mastery, solemnly absolved all those on both sides 
who should take part in what was supposed would 
prove the decisive battle. The bishops in council, after 
the battle, declared that the parties had fought to secure 
justice only, that the judgment of God had manifestly 
settled the right, and that therefore whoever had taken 
j)art in the battle, either by advice or by actual fighting, 
should be absolved from all the penalties prescribed by 



THE TREATY OF VERDUN. 133 

the Church for such acts. This seems a survival of 
the old Frankish and heathen method of ascertaining 
the will of God ; but what a picture of the civilization 
of the time is presented, when even the Church, power- 
ful as it was in so many respects in those days, could 
find no more Christian method of settling a disputed 
succession than the adoption of the lesser evil of dis- 
covering the will of God by means of a single battle 
rather than by a series of prolonged and bloody wars ! 
The battle, — that of Fontanet, 841, — if it did not in 
itself settle the question of the supremacy of one of the 
brothers, at all events opened the way to a negotiation 
among them. This resulted in a treaty between the 
sons of Louis, grandsons of Charlemagne, in 843, di- 
viding the Empire among them. 

This treaty, called the treaty of Verdun, forms an 
important historical epoch, as we shall see. By it Louis, 
afterwards called the German, was assigned Francia 
OrientaliSy east of the Rhine, — speaking generally, mod- 
ern Germany ; Charles, afterwards called the Bald, that 
portion of modern France west of the rivers Meuse and 
Saone to the ocean and the Pyrenees ; Lothair, who was 
the eldest son, a long strip of territory betw^een those 
portions assigned to his brothers, extending from the 
North Sea to the Alj^s, and embracing modern Bel- 
gium, Lorraine, Burgundy, and Dauphiny. Lothair 
was given besides, as the eldest son, the Emperorship, 
with the nominal sovereignty of Italy. The territory 

assigned to him was one of a long and narrow shape, 

12 



134 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

and hence constantly exposed to the incursions of his 
neighbors, his own brothers, but it embraced within it 
his three capital cities, — that of Aix-la-Chapelle as King 
of the Franks, that of Monza as King of the Lom- 
bards, and that of Rome as the Emperor of the Holy 
Roman Empire. I have said that this treaty of Ver- 
dun, in 843, forms an important historical epoch; and it 
does so, not merely because it settled which of Charle- 
magne's grandsons should rule certain portions of his 
Empire, but also because of the underlying principle 
upon which the partition was effected, and the results 
which followed from it. By it (1) Europe was perma- 
nently divided into the three great nationalities, Ger- 
many, France, and Italy. (2) This division was made on 
the principle of a difference of race and language in the 
inhabitants of the different districts. Teutons, Celts, 
and Latins were henceforth to be governed by different 
rulers, whose first notion of rule was prompted by the 
instinct of race, and who, as ages went on, drifted wider 
apart and had less and less in common. (3) Modern 
Germany, modern France, modern Italy, begin their life 
in 843, the date of the treaty of Verdun. From that 
date too, consequently, the Empire of Charlemagne, 
although nominally and for certain important purposes 
still surviving, as we shall see, yet for the object for 
which it had been established ceased to exist. 

What concerns us now is not so much the breaking 
up of the system by which the Empire had been ruled, 
as that which was substituted for it. Within a few 



SKETCH OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 135 

years after the death of Louis le Debonnaire, the Im- 
perial system was replaced, more or less, in all parts 
of the former dominions of Charlemagne, by what is 
known in history as the feudal system. This was the 
characteristic system of government in Europe during 
the larger portion of the Middle Age. We shall have 
occasion to speak hereafter of the development of this 
system in Germany, in England, and in Italy, and we 
shall confine ourselves now to some account of it in 
that portion of the Empire which fell in the partition 
at Yerdun, 843, to the share of Charles the Bald, — that 
is, as near as may be, modern France. 

Some preliminary sketch of the origin and character- 
istic features of the feudal system may be appropriate 
here. When the Frankish chiefs and those of the other 
Teutonic tribes invaded Western Europe, they were in 
the habit of rewarding the fidelity and courage of their 
companions, or principal followers, — comites, as they 
were called, — who had aided them in their conquest?. 
These rewards consisted sometimes of horses or of arms, 
but oftener of lands in the conquered countries, and 
they were made probably at that time without any 
formal obligation on the part of the person on whom 
they were bestowed of service to the chief in considera- 
tion of the gifts. According to the ancient Teutonic 
custom, however, as will be remembered, it was con- 
sidered not only a duty, but an honor, for any young 
warrior, no matter how high his lineage, to serve under 
a renowned chief. Such service was performed without 



136 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

any thought of other reward than the approval and 
companionship of the chief, this relation constituting 
military patronage in the old sense. The lands thus 
presented to these warriors were called allodial; that is, 
their tenure involved no obligation of service whatever. 
But in the course of time, from various causes, such as 
the diminution of the number of warriors "in conse- 
quence of the losses suffered during the perpetual wars 
of Charlemagne, and the necessity of guarding the more 
extensive frontiers of the countries he conquered, the 
following expedient was adopted to secure a more per- 
manent and efficient army; and this forms the germ 
or basis of the feudal system proper. Lands were no 
longer bestowed by the sovereign (chief, or king, or 
Emperor, as he happened to be) as free gifts. They were 
granted in the form of benefices, or fiefs, as they were 
called ; that is, they were to be holdeu upon the con- 
dition that the grantee should, by virtue of the grant, 
perform certain services to the lord, generally of a mili- 
tary kind. When these services so agreed upon ceased 
to be rendered, the lands were forfeited to the original 
owner, or lord of the fief, as he was called. There was 
a peculiar ceremony in the early days in the investiture 
of these fiefs, or lands held in fief, which is very signifi- 
cant, as showing the new relations created thereby be- 
tween the giver and the .receiver. He upon whom the 
grant was to be bestowed knelt before the lord who was 
to give him the land, and promised to become his maniy 
and to keep faith and loyalty towards him against all 



FORM OF CONFERRING FIEFS. 137 

who miglit assail his right, by every means in his power. 
The lord then made a reciprocal promise of protection 
and defence of his vassal, as the grantee was called, 
and then the investiture was completed by a symbolical 
delivery to the new vassal of a handful of earth or the 
twig of a tree. Thus the ownership of land and the 
rights and duties of its possessors were supposed to be 
firmly bound together. It may be observed, too, that 
we here find the germ of the doctrine of reciprocal 
allegiance and protection which forms so important a 
chapter in our modern law, and also that of the rela- 
tion of landlord and tenant, which to-day even in this 
country is based upon the old feudal conception of lord 
and vassal. 

The process I have described was that observed by 
the sovereign in conferring large benefices upon his 
principal officers or comites ; but these officers sub- 
divided the benefices or fiefs so conferred among their 
own followers and companions, with the agreement on 
their part to hold each of these divided portions of the 
original fief of the person by whom they were imme- 
diately conferred, on conditions similar to those by 
which that person held of the sovereign or overlord. 
These smaller fiefs were called subinfeudations, and 
were, in fact, mere miniatures of the larger fiefs. In a 
short time nearly all the land in France, from reasons 
which will presently appear, was held in fief, either 
directly and immediately of the king, or indirectly, 

by the freemen of lesser wealth or inferior nobility, of 

12^ 



138 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

the grantees of the king, so that a thoroughly graded 
hierarchy, beginning with the king and ending with the 
smallest landholder, prevailed, which was intended to 
assure protection and safety on the one side, and loyalty, 
allegiance, and stipulated service on the other. 

This system, it must be remembered, was no inge- 
nious and speculative device, as it has often been repre- 
sented, to reduce the population of those countries living 
under it to slavery, but *it was eagerly adopted by those 
who had an interest in the preservation of order, not 
merely as a method of counteracting that anarchy which 
then threatened the overthrow of all settled society, but 
also, and especially, as the only effectual method of 
re})elling the armed invasions of the barbarians, and 
especially of the Northmen, which began again shortly 
after the death of Charlemagne. In one sense the 
feudal system was an endeavor to combine military 
efficiency with that spirit of independence on the part 
of the chiefs which was so characteristic of the Ger- 
man warriors in their native lands. The object now, 
however, of the rulers — the immediate object — was de- 
fence of their homes, not to send out expeditions such 
as those undertaken in the campaigns under Charle- 
magne. We shall see that, as a system, the feudal 
form of government, arbitrary and oppressive as we 
may think it, was in the beginning a necessity of the 
time. One of the best proofs that it was such is 
found in its universal adoption throughout Europe. 
Not only land, but other kinds of property, even offices 



FEUDAL " G^MMENDATIONr 139 

in Church and State, were held in fief with a view to 
protection. AVe must remember that after the death of 
Charlemagne there existed for a long time no public 
authority in Europe strong enough to maintain order 
throughout a large territory, and that each chief, who 
had formerly been, perhaps, under the rule of the great 
Emperor, a firm supporter of his system and authority, 
now, freed from his control, sought only to increase his 
own lands and power. The result was a perpetual reign 
of force, if not of terror, a constant struggle for those 
objects, where might made right, the end of which 
was the survival of the strongest, and during which 
the successful pursuit of the arts of peace became im- 
possible, — a condition of things which, if continued, 
clearly foreshadowed a relapse into barbarism. 

There is a curious feature in tlie early history of feu- 
dalism which shows how it was adopted as a means of 
security and safety from the utter lawlessness of the 
times. We read of many free proprietors holding lands 
by allodial right, — that is to say, without any obligation 
of service to any one by virtue of such possession, — de- 
spairing of any security and protection of their property, 
since they had no claim to invoke the aid of a powerful 
chieftain in their defence, recommend'mg themselves, as 
it was technically called, to some renowned warrior or 
lord ; that is, abandoning their free proprietorship, and 
placing themselves in the feudal relation to such a 
chief, conveying to him their lands and receiving them 
back from him in fief, thus assuming towards him the 



140 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

position of a vassal, and receiving from him in return the 
feudal obligation of defence and protection. This prac- 
tice began in France shortly after the death of Charle- 
magne, and was formally recognized and sanctioned by 
Charles the Bald by what is called the Edict of Mersen, 
in 847. It was there provided tliat every freeman (that 
is, every one possessed of allodial lands) might choose 
a lord, who should be either the king or one of his 
vassals as he might deem best, and that no direct or 
immediate vassal of the king should be obliged to 
serve under him in war, unless against a foreign enemy. 
This edict, while it shows the disintegration of the 
royal power and proves how the nobility profited from 
it by transferring the armed force of the nation to itself, 
also makes it clear that at that time the landholders 
could find safety only by uniting their interests, and 
establishing among tliemselves the reciprocal obligation 
of service on the one side and protection on the other. 

The practice of conveying the royal domain — that is, 
the lands belonging to the crown — in fief to the great 
lords, and thus dividing the territory into a number of 
comparatively small sovereignties, was carried on, either 
as a matter of policy or of necessity, by all the degen- 
erate descendants of Charlemagne in France, until no 
land was left to the ownership or under the immediate 
rule of the king of the vast inheritance of the great 
Emperor save the city of Laon, which became the capi- 
tal of his nominal kingdom. France, indeed, ceased 
to be a kingdom in any proper sense of the word. Its 



FEUDAL CHARACTERISTICS. \\\ 

territory became totally dismembered or disintegrated, 
and was divided at the close of the ninth century into 
twenty-nine great fiefs, which had increased in number 
a hundred years later to fifty-five. Duchies, counties, 
viscounties, and lordships, in which sovereigns succeeded 
sov^ereigns by hereditary right, and distinct laws and 
customs, all of course at the expense of the central or 
royal authority, were regularly established therein. Thivs 
France under this system became a mere congeries of 
distinct governments, the will of the chief in each being 
practically the only law, and this will was enforced by 
the power of the sword. The populations within them 
(except, of course, the serfs, who were regarded as mere 
chattels) were bound together in the relation of lord and 
vassal, the principal object being protection. 

The fiefs do not seem at first to have been hereditary, 
but they became so as soon as the system was in full vigor. 
If the lands only had descended from father to son, the 
mischief, as the system became firmly rooted, would not 
have been as serious as history proves it to have been. 
But not only were the lands hereditary with the services 
clue for them, but the title, and the powers of government 
also, descended to the possessors with the lands. This 
absolute and almost arbitrary jurisdiction within their 
fiefs, thus transmissible to their children by the pos- 
sessors of the great fiefs, might remain uncontrolled in 
incapable families for generations, or such chargeSj as 
they were called, might be, and w^ere often, sold when 
these haughty barons required money. This method of 



142 MEDLEVAL HISTORY. 

governing and of administering the law under the ckiini 
of hereditary right by each feudal chieftain was always 
regarded as one of the greatest practical grievances in 
France down to the time of the Revolution; and, indeed, 
the abuses which were inseparable from the working of 
the feudal machinery, and especially this part of it, even 
reduced as they were under Richelieu and Louis XIV ., 
were among the principal causes which produced that 
catastrophe. There is said to be but one form of gov- 
ernment in history which meets the universal condemna- 
tion of all ruled by it ; and that is the feudal system. 

It must not be supposed that in the partition of France 
into feudatories the king was ignored. He, from the 
very nature of the system, was its head, from whom all 
authority theoretically descended. He was the fountain 
of honor, justice, and authority. He was called the 
suzerai7i, or overlord, and those who did homage to him 
directly and personally for their fiefs were called grand 
vassals, and bound by virtue of that homage to obey and 
support him ; but such grand vassals as the Dukes of 
Burgundy and of Aquitaiue and the Counts of Cham- 
pagne and of Flanders, having within their territories 
all the royal rights, such as that of making war, of 
coining money, of making general laws and enforcing 
them by means of their own tribunals, and who were 
exempt from the payment of public taxes, were not 
likely to pay much heed to the orders of a nominal 
superior, whose claim to rule them rested upon little 
else than the title of king and the possession of some 



CHARACTERISTICS OF FIETS. 143 



srDall remnant of the former vast royal domain. Prac- 
tically, the feudal system made the owner of a piece of 
land, large or small, the absolute sovereign of those who 
dwelt thereon. 

The difference between the later Carlovingians and 
Hugh Capet in their power over their turbulent nobles 
was this, that the first, although descendants of Charle- 
magne, possessed only, as has been said, i\\Q insignif- 
icant town of Laon, while the other was the feudal 
lord of the duchy of France, the largest fief in the 
kingdom. We must conceive of the whole territory of 
France as feudalized,— that is, divided and subdivided 
into larger and smaller fiefs, nominally constituting a 
complete hierarchy, with a gradation of powers and 
responsibilities, in which each landholder obeyed some 
one above him, and he in turn was obeyed by others 
beneath him, but where in point of fact the law of force 
in their relations with their co-feudatories and all save 
their own vassals prevailed, the right which they most 
jealously guarded being that of private war with each 
other. 

Of lif^ within these fiefs, especially that of the 
viReins and the serfs on the domain, I shall speak 
more particularly when I come to discuss the peculiar 
condition of mediaeval agriculture and industry; and 
I shall have occasion also to show hereafter how tlie 
Church, with its ministries, was the light of ages made 
dark by the rule of the feudal chiefs. It is only neces- 
sary to say here that the practical working of such a 



144 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

system could only tend to develop and strengthen some 
of the worst traits of the barbarous Teutonic invaders 
when they were transformed into feudal lords. I do 
not forget all that has been said of the love of domestic 
life, of the reverence for woman, of the much-vaunted 
influence of chivalry and knighthood in this age, all of 
which, it is claimed, became firmly rooted in European 
life and society by the peculiarities of the feudal system ; 
but, after all, the shadow of barbarism which was cast 
by the terrible realities of life in those days of inse- 
curity and lawlessness makes the picture a very dark 
one. Civilization in its true sense — that is, the highest 
type of social life possible under the conditions of an- 
cient or mediaeval days — must generally be looked for 
in the cities and not in the country. There is hardly a 
greater diiference between the agora of the Greek cities, 
or the Roman /or it?7i, and the feudal castle than is to be 
found between the free and public life of the Greeks or 
Romans and that led by the knights of the Middle Age 
in their gloomy fortresses. 

I have endeavored to show how little real or perma- 
nent union there was among the holders of the different 
fiefs for any common object, although the very theory of 
this system required a gradation of rank among free 
warriors, the object of which was to secure a common 
protection of their possessions, each contributing to 
make the military system of defence efficient for all. 

The military power of the feudal system to resist a 
formidable invasion was put to a very severe test in 



INVASIONS OF THE NORTHMEN 145 

France just as it was beginning to supplant the Imperial 
system of Charlemagne. The occasion was found in the 
lonsf-continued and most destructive incursions of the 
Northmen, who, as soon as Clrarlemagne had died, 
attacked with constantly-increasing force, nearly every 
year, for many years, the coasts of France and Germany, 
ascending the rivers in their light boats, penetrating far 
inland in search of plunder, devastating large towns, and 
burning monasteries and churches. There seems to have 
been little effectual resistance made by those in power in 
France to these assaults. The invaders held the whole 
course of the Seine as far as Paris, which they besieged 
three times; they destroyed Bordeaux; they established 
themselves on the banks of the Loire; and finally they 
took permanent possession of the finest province in 
France, — that of Normandy, whose very name, which 
they gave it, is a perpetual memorial of their victorious 
prowess. When we remember that these Northmeu 
must hav^e been comparatively few in number, since 
they came in ships, — that, after all, they wxre only the 
rear-guard of that vast army of barbarian invaders 
which for centuries had assailed the Roman Euipire, 
the last remnant of which it had been hoped Charle- 
magne had destroyed on the banks of the Elbe, — that 
the races they attacked in France and Germany were of 
the same blood and habits as themselves, and were in 
point of fact only the advanced portion of that same 
army of invasion to which these North uien belonged, 

— when one reflects upon all these things, he is at a loss 

13 



146 MEDL^EVAL HISTORY. 



to understand why the phindering incursions of these 
piratical rovers were not checked, especially in France. 
The truth is, that tlie resistance was not more effective 
simply because its organization w^as not intelligent and 
vigorous. While the descendants of Charlemagne were 
quarrelling witli each other over the partition of his 
Empire, the great lords were seizing the opportunity 
to enlarge their domains at the expense of the royal 
rights and territory, and each of the leaders was en- 
gaged in an ignoble scramble for more land and more 
power. No one was willing or strong enough to pro- 
vide for the safety of all when it w^as threatened by 
these fierce invaders with a common havoc. The utter 
inefficiency of the later Carlovingians in their attempts 
to repel these invasions, which threatened soon to make 
France a desert of desolation, and the skill, bravery, 
and success of several members of one family among 
their greatest feudatories — that of Robert le Fort, or 
Ca^ei — in rescuing the country from the danger of 
ruin, were the principal causes of the transfer of the 
royal authority in France from the second to the third 
race, as it is called, that is, from the descendants of 
Charlemagne to those of Robert and Hugh Capet, and 
of retaining the crown in that family for nearly a 
thousand years, or until Loiiis XVI. perished on the 
scaffold, in 1793. 

The first Capet in history was the one appointed by 
Charles the Bald to defend the Marh, as the territory 
watered by the river Seine was then called, from the 



SERVICES OF THE FAMILY OF CAPET. 147 



incursions of the Northmen. It was given to him in fief 
and called the Duchy of France. It was in the defence 
of this frontier that he acquired flime for himself and 
power for his family. In his arduous service against 
these wild and hitherto unsubdued pirates he became the 
true savior of France. Robert Capet was a statesman 
as well as a great warrior. The Northmen having been 
defeated, Rollo, their chief, at his suggestion, was made 
the feudal Duke of Normandy, a measure which soon 
brought to a close the piratical expeditions and made 
in a few generations the Normans the most French of 
Frenchmen. 

The victories of the family of Capet, Dukes of 
France, pointed out its chiefs as the natural succes- 
sors of the feeble and unfortunate Carlovingians. The 
tenth century is filled with the quarrels between them 
and the house of Capet, whose power and consideration 
increased with every step, and in 987 Hugh Capet 
w^as elected by the great vassals King of France, and 
the house of Charlemagne became extinct, the last 
heir being confined in a monastery, a convenient way 
adopted in those days of getting rid of a troublesome 
pretender. It will be understood that the title of king 
added little to the real power of Hugh Capet. That 
rested, as has been said, upon his possession of the 
duchy of France, the largest and most important and 
most central of all the fiefs, and upon a recognition of 
his services and those of his family by the other great 
vassals. The annals of the kingdom of France as it 



148 MEDL-EVAL HISTORY. 

existed under the first four Capetiens are singularly bare 
of events of historical importance, either at home or 
abroad. It is true that during this period England 
was conquered by the Norman-French, and that many 
Frenchmen, some of them great vassals, were engaged 
in the early Crusades; but the expedition against Eng- 
land was undertaken by the Duke of Normandy without 
either the aid or the control of the King of France, and 
it was not until the days of Philip Augustus (1180), of 
Louis VIII. (1223), and of St. Louis (1236) that the 
French kings led a national army to the rescue of the 
Holy Sepulchre. How little the kingdom of France 
in the modern sense existed during the feudal regime 
may be illustrated by a statement of the geographical 
position of the great fiefs by which Hugh Capet and his 
successors found themselves surrounded for more than a 
hundred years in their duchy of France. That duchy 
extended from the English Channel to some distance 
below the present city of Orleans, sixty or seventy miles 
south of Paris. It was hemmed in on the northeast by 
the county of Flanders, on the east by that of Cham- 
pagne, and on the west by the great dukedom of Nor- 
mandy. To the southeast was the duchy of Burgundy. 
Farther south, on the west, below the river Loire, were 
the duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony, and the coun- 
ties of Languedoc, Provence, and Dauphiny, under the 
Counts of Toulouse. 

Another curious feature of the denationalizing char- 
acter of the feudal system in France is found in this, 



ENGLISH KINGS, FEUDAL LORDS IN FRANCE. I49 

that the King of England was the real governor or 
feudal sovereign of nearly half of the present territory 
of France during almost a century. For the English 
Plantagenet kings were legally Dukes of Normandy as 
descendants of William the Conqueror, Counts of Anjou 
as heirs of the Empress Matilda, who had married Guy, 
commonly called Plantagenet, the lord of that county, 
and Dukes of Guienne or Aquitaine because Henry II. 
of England had married Eleanor, the divorced wife of 
Louis VII., who was the heiress of that duchy. The 
King of England never hesitated to recognize the King 
of France as his suzercim in that country, just as any 
other of the grand vassals of his crown would have 
done; and when at last Philip Augustus, in 1204, deter- 
mined to annex Normandy to the" crown, his object was 
accomplished by the regular process of the feudal law. 
John, King of England, was summoned, as Duke of 
Normancly and lord of other fiefs in France, to appear 
before a court composed of the twelve highest nobles in 
the kingdom, and was accused of having with his own 
hand killed the lawful heir, his nephew, Prince Arthur, 
and thus having forfeited his fiefs to the crown. He did 
not aj)pear, and the fiefs were accordingly confiscated to 
the crown and taken possession of by the royal authority, 
and thus became wholly French. 

It will be seen hereafter that modern France, as to its 
territory, has been made up by a process of absorption 
of quasi-independent fiefs and their annexation to the 

crown, and that this process was going on slowly from 

13* 



150 MED LEVA L HISTORY. 

the time of Hugh Capet until that of Louis XII.,— 987- 
1500, — a period of five hundred years. It is impossible 
here to enumerate all the causes which produced this 
great change, a change which makes the contrast in 
])olitical opinion and ideas between mediaeval and modern 
France quite as striking as the changes in her territorial 
jurisdiction. I can only indicate the direction of the 
stream of tendency, and that may be said, generally, to 
liave been towards an aggrandizement of the power of the 
king and of a centralized administration at the expense 
of the authority of the great feudatories and the gradu- 
ally increasing power of the tiers-etat. The abuses were 
so great in the system, the king's authority was so en- 
tirely nominal, the obligations of justice and right were so 
entirely disregarded in the arbitrary exercise of the lord's 
power, the evils of all kinds threatening anarchy were of 
such a galling and practical kind, that we are surprised 
that resistance was not offered sooner than it was. 

The king, as suzerain or overlord, was, as we have 
seen, powerless. Apparently, resistance came first from 
the towns, or communes, as they were called, all being 
then under feudal subjection, and presenting, of course, 
wherever there was any trade or industry in the town, 
great temptation to plunder. It is instructive to know 
that the very first town that resisted (about the year 
1 109) because the tyranny of its feudal superior was no 
longer endurable was one that had a bishop for sei- 
gneur or lord, the old city of Laon, the last stronghold 
and refuge of the Carlovingian kings, and then a place 



THE FREEDOM OF THE TOWNS. 151 

of considerable importance. The subject of the rise of 
free cities is a very large one, especially with reference 
to its far-reaching result on the general progress of 
civilization. We can only speak now of that aspect of 
it which has to do with the resistance of these cities to 
feudal oppression, and the evidence it affords of their 
strength. The revolt of the city of Laon against its 
feudal lord, the bishop, will illustrate what was done, 
and done successfully, during the twelfth century by 
one-third of all the towns in France with the same 
object and generally with the same result. The inhab- 
itants, weary of their misrule, taking advantage of the 
absence of their lord, met and established a representa- 
tive municipal government of their own, and then pur- 
chased the feudal right of lordship from the seigneur 
and transferred it to the government which they them- 
selves had substituted for it, in trust for their benefit. 
They then paid to the king, Louis VII. (about A.D. 
1137), as suzerain J or overlord, a certain sum of money 
for a patent or charter confirming the legality of the 
new govern ucnt which they had established. There 
were many and long struggles in this town and in 
the others which had adopted similar measures before 
the affranchisement des communes was fully settled as 
against the lords ; but this was one of those revolutions 
which do not go backward, and in its results one of the 
most fruitful in the history of the age. It ended not 
merely in taking away from the feudal nobles the most 
important source of their revenues, derived from the 



152 MEDL^VAL HISTORY. 

arbitrary taxation of the wealth of the to^^'ns, but it 
transferred also the power over the inhabitants for cer- 
tain purposes to the king, while the franchises of the 
inhabitants were secured by a representative system of 
government. The boiu^geoisie of the towns had evi- 
dently found the joints in the heavy armor of their 
oppressors, and the king and the bourgeoisie, bound by 
a common interest, lost no opportunity of assailing, as 
occasion presented, the overgrown pretensions of these 
petty local despots. 

The Crusades, like the rise of the free cities, had much 
to do with lessening the power and independence of the 
higher feudal nobility. The Crusades were a popular 
movement, and vast multitudes of serfs no doubt gained 
their freedom by becoming Crusaders, the universal 
military code in all ages, I believe, providing that none 
but a freeman can be a warrior. Besides, the feudal 
chiefs, as the Crusades w^nt on, took part in them, and 
they needed money to appear with befitting dignity as 
leaders and to provide for the equipment of their re- 
tainers. But the money was in the hands of the bour- 
geoisie of the great towns, not in those of the lords. 
A principle of feudal law prohibited the conferring of 
a fief upon any person not noble (roturiers, as they were 
called). How, then, was the money to be secured by 
the seigneur, who, of course, had nothing but his lands 
to offer in order to obtain it? Philip Augustus, one 
of the most treacherous but one of the ablest kings 
France ever had, solved the difficulty. by decreeing that 



ROTURIERS BECOME NOBLES. 153 

the royal investiture of any man with a fief should raise 
him at once from the rank of a roturier to that of a 
noble. This policy was carried out on a large scale 
soon after, and of course was'a fatal blow to feudalism, 
as the hereditary right to certain powers and dignities 
was no longer exclusively possessed by those of noble 
birth. As a result, these powers and jurisdictions, or 
rather the lands which conferred them, were not con- 
fined to a particular caste, but could be bought and sold 
like other things, and the question became, not who had 
the longest pedigree, but who had the best-filled purse. 
It was soon found out, too, that roturiers could fight in 
a cause which they had at heart quite as well on foot as 
the knights did on horseback ; and the weavers of Flan- 
ders at the battle of Courtray (1302), and the English 
yeomen at Crecy and at Poitiers (1346), proved clearly 
that the true military strength of a country did not lie 
in its armed knights and their feudal array, but in the 
efficient military organization of its people. 

The preponderance of the feudal system, as represent- 
ing a power in France which was exercised by numerous 
petty sovereigns, each practically supreme within his 
own sphere, exercising authority for his own purposes, 
and setting at defiance both the power of the king and 
disregarding any claim to political rights on the part 
of the tierS'Haty or non-noble class, ceased during the 
hundred-years' war between England and France (in 
1328), undertaken to maintain tlie claim of Edward 
HI. to the French crown, "flie direct evidence of 



154 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

this great change is found in the ennobling of roturiers 
and their investiture with fiefs, as well as in the 
growing power of the crown, due chiefly to the annex- 
ation of the fiefs of some of the greater nobles to it. 
It is to be seen also in the frequent convocations of 
the States-General or Parliament of France, in which 
the representatives of the towns, or the tiers-etat, occu- 
pied a position of as great influence theoretically in the 
settlement of the affairs of the kingdom as the nobles 
and clergy, as well as in the growth and greater relative 
importance of the towns themselves, and in the revolt 
of the peasants, — La Jacquerie, as it was called. All 
this goes to show that, while the feudal power in France 
still remained strong, the exclusive feudal privilege of 
governing the country with no other object than the 
aggrandizement of the power of the local feudal chief- 
tains was beginning to give way. 

During the hundred-years' war the kings, and es- 
pecially Charles Y. (called le Sage), thought to add to 
the means of defending the kingdom by curtailing as 
far as possible the privileges of the nobles and by in- 
creasing those of the bourgeois. Perhaps the utter inca- 
pacity and feebleness of the nobility shown during the 
wars with the English, their division into parties for 
and against foreign invasion, and the ruin and distress 
they brought upon the country which it was their duty 
to defend, deprived them at last of the only pretext — 
that of their services as defenders of the realm — upon 
which they could base*the claim to the maintenance of 



THE WORK OF JEANNE HARC. 155 



the extravagant privileges which their order had so long 
enjoyed. It is a curious fact that the instinct of nation- 
ality and the destruction of the claim of this exclusive 
and })rivileged class to be regarded as the true defenders 
of the country were born in the French mind at the 
same time. More curious still is it that, when France 
was torn to pieces by the quarrels of the Burgundians 
and the Armagnacs and by the frightful excesses of the 
English invaders, a young peasant-girl should have 
revived the hopes of the country, then brought to the 
verge of ruin by the criminal ambition of the haugh- 
tiest of her nobles. When these nobles had lono- fliiled 
to rescue France, she raised the fortunes of the kin^" 
and nispired her countrymen with such enthusiasm 
that they were able to make a united effort to drive out 
the stranger, so that the lost provinces were recovered, 
and the English reigned no longer in France. There 
are many aspects of the story of Jeanne d'Arc which 
remind us, as we recall them, almost of the enthusiasm 
aroused by the message of an inspired prophet; yet cer- 
tainly on no surer basis can her fame rest in history than 
that she was the first apostle in France of that sentiment 
of national unity binding all her children together, in 
opposition to the separatism of the feudal policy, which 
modern Frenchmen at least believe to be not merely 
the nurse of all patriotism, but the inspiring motive of 
that ardent desire so characteristic of their countrymen 
at all times to be the leaders of civilization in Europe. 
The political importance of the feudal nobles did not, 



156 MED LEVA L HISTORY. 

of course, cease with the loss of many of the important 
powers of government which they possessed during the 
Middle Age. They retained, indeed, many of their 
seignorial rights and jurisdictions until they came into 
conflict with Richelieu and his system of centralization. 
Under his powerful rule every claim which interfered 
with the full exercise of the royal centralized author- 
ity was disallowed, and the castles were razed to the 
ground. The French nobles had for more than four 
hundred years to fight hard to maintain their recognition 
as a class, — the leading class in the government of the 
country, — and for the preservation of such of their 
privileges as were not regarded as inconsistent with the 
supremacy of the crown. At last the Revolution de- 
stroyed them as a distinct order or class in the nation, 
because it was felt that whatever services their ancestors 
might have rendered to France, — and none were greater, 
as Ave have seen, than those of the founder of the family 
of the unfortunate king (Louis Capet, as his judges de- 
risively called him), — still all that remained at the close 
of the eighteenth century was privilege without service, 
than which nothing can be more odious. 

We sometimes hear it said that the natural limits, as 
they are called, of modern France, should be those of 
ancient Gaul, — viz., the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Rhine, 
and the ocean. But if I have succeeded in showing 
how modern France, as distinct from the country of 
the ancient Franks, was formed, it will be inferred that 
the process by which this result was reached was one 



NATURAL BOUNDARIES. 157 

of simple absorption, and that there is no such thing as 
natural boundaries. Beginning with the fief of Hugh 
Capet or his ancestor Robert in 987 (the Duchy of 
France), we find all the provinces in turn absorbed and 
annexed to the crown: Normandy, Champagne, Tou- 
raine, and Languedoc during the thirteenth century; 
Poitou, Saintonge, the Lyonnese, and Dauphiny in the 
fourteenth ; Maine, Anjou, Guienne, Gascony, and Pro- 
vence in the fifteenth ; and the remain ino; o^reat fiefs or 
provinces at still later periods. 



14 



CHAPTER VI. 

GERMANY, FEUDAL AND IMPERIAL. 

The partition of the Empire of Charlemagne among 
his grandsons was made by the treaty of Verdun in 
843. By the agi^ement then entered into, the foun- 
dations of modern France, Germany, and Italy were 
laid. Some account has been given of the immediate 
results of the partition, and especially of the develop- 
ment of the feudal system in France. It is now pro- 
posed to speak of some of the characteristic features 
of the history of Germany during the Middle Age, 
beginning with the division of Charlemagne's Empire 
in 843. 

We are so accustomed to look upon France and Ger- 
many not merely as distinct countries, but as differing 
from each other so completely in all those characteristic 
features which go to make up a nationality, that it is 
not easy to conceive a state of things in Europe at any 
period of. history when they had much in common. 
It is nevertheless true that they had both lived under 
the same kings — the kings of the Franks — for nearly 
five centuries, that the same forms of government pre- 
vailed among them, that they had both been ruled by 
the great Charlemagne, tliat the greater part of the 
population in both belonged to the same race, and that 
158 



GERMAN AND FRENCH FEUDALISM. I59 

eacli branch of the family into which the Frankish 
tribes were divided by the treaty of 843 claims even to 
this day Charlemagne as its special type and represen- 
tative, and his glory as that of its founder. Besides, 
after their separation, that feudal system which was the 
outgrowth of the confusion arisino; from the weakness 
and decay of the Imperial system was characterized by 
the same forms, institutions, and peculiarities in both 
those two great divisions of the Empire afterwards 
known as France and Germany. So true is this in 
regard to the constitution of the feudal form of gov- 
ernment that a description of its peculiar organization 
and the sphere of its operation in one of these countries 
will serve generally to explain its course and develop- 
ment in the other. What I have said, therefore, in 
regard to the feudal system in France may be applied, 
with little qualification, to the beginnings at least of 
that system in Germany. These two countries have 
drifted apart very widely since the days of Charle- 
magne's grandsons ; but we must, if we wish to study 
history aright, remember that they had, if not a com- 
mon origin in race, at least for many generations a 
common rule and common ideas of government, and 
that the process which has now for a long time made 
their relations to each other those of hate and rivalry 
was a slow one. 

The reasons which led to the adoption by two great 
branches of the Frankish family — East Franks, West 
Franks, — Germany and France — of the feudal form of 



160 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

government were common to both. The history of the 
beginnings of this system is the same in both, but the 
final outcome was very different, and the contrast in the 
methods of its development in the two countries forms 
one of the most instructive and interesting chapters in 
liistory. The results, from causes which we sliall have to 
investigate, were in some respects wholly opposite. In 
France, as I have explained, the force during the Middle 
Age was centripetal, or tending towards the centre, at 
least in the latter period ; in Germany, that force was 
always centrifugal, and all power of cohesion between 
the several parts became gradually destroyed. In France, 
as the feudal life ran its course, everything gradually 
tended to unity, monarchy, centralization ; in Germany, 
the spirit of locality, separatism, decentralization, pre- 
vailed. France comes out of the Middle Age into mod- 
ern history, after a struggle of seven centuries, strong, 
united, intensely national ; Germany, on the contrary, 
split up into hundreds of little principalities, with hardly 
closer relations to their Emperor than those of the great 
vassals of France to Hugh Capet when they elected him 
their king. Our main object in this chapter is to try 
and discover some explanation of this extraordinary 
difference; in other words^ to ascertain why the same 
system of government should have produced such differ- 
ent results in the two countries. 

Lewis the German (grandson of Charlemagne), to 
whom, by the treaty of Verdun, East Francia — that is, 
Germany east of the Rhine — had been assigned, dying 



THE SIX GERMAN TRIBES. 161 

in 876, was succeeded by his surviving son, Charles the 
Fat. He, proving himself utterly incapable of defend- 
ing the country against the incursions of the Northmen, 
and therefore unfit to perform the essential duties of 
King of the Franks in those days of violence, was 
deposed in 888 by his nobles. He was the last legiti- 
mate male descendant of Charlemagne ; and such was 
the superstitious reverence at that time for the race of 
which the great Emperor was the founder, notwith- 
standing the extraordinary and well-proved incapacity 
of each one of its members save the chief, that tlie 
nobles decided to choose as their king, on the death of 
Charles, an illegitimate descendant of the Emperor,— 
Arnulf, — simply because the blood of Charlemagne ran 
in his veins. Arnulf proved not an unworthy scion of 
his illustrious ancestor. 

The principal tribes in Germany at the time of the 
death of Arnulf were six in number, inhabiting the fol- 
lowing districts : 1st, 8axony, the largest territory, and 
the most renowned for its warriors, between the Lower 
Rhine and the Oder, the North Sea and the Hartz Moun- 
tains, including modern Hanover, Westphalia, Bruns- 
wick, and Northern Prussia. The Saxons were the last 
barbarians subdued by Charlemagne, and they still re- 
tained their fierceness and strength. 2d, Thuringia, south 
of the Saxon lands, a district not specially remarkable in 
mediaeval history. It formed, later, part of the duchy of 
Saxony. 3d, Franconia, or country of the East Franks, 

— Central Germany, from the Middle Rhine eastward to 

14* 



162 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

the Elbe, or nearly so. 4tli, Bavaria, the central south- 
ern portion of Germany, extending to the eastern frontier, 
or Ostmark, afterwards known as the Archduchy of 
Austria. 5th, Swabia, Southern Germany and German 
Switzerland, from the Alps to the Danube and beyond. 
6th, Lorraine, the border-land between France and Ger- 
many, from the Alps to the North Sea. At the head of 
each of the tribes occupying these districts was a chief, 
called a Duke, who, during the whole Middle Age, was 
the hereditary sovereign of the lands occupied by it. 
From one or other of these families was chosen the 
German king, or Emperor as he was called, until the 
end of the thirteenth century, and the struggle between 
these dukes and the king whom they elected from their 
own number forms one of the most important chapters 
of mediseval history in Germany. 

But previous to this rivalry for supremacy among 
these families it was necessary that Germany should be 
made secure from invasion. It is satisfactory to find 
that the real title of those princely houses who strug- 
gled for the headship or the kingship of the country 
in early times was in almost all cases the real service 
they had rendered in resisting the barbarian invaders. 
Their claims rested upon the public gratitude for such 
services, and if their rule was one of force we must 
remember that its most conspicuous display was made 
for the public good. Resistance to invasion was the 
great preoccupation of the time, and the worthiest was 
he who was not merely the strongest, but the bravest 



HENRY THE FOWLER. 163 

ill averting the ruin which threatened Germany from 
tliese invasions. 

The male posterity of Charlemagne in Germany be- 
came extinct on the death of the son of Arnulf, Lewis 
the Child. The nobles of the different tribes, anxious, 
after tlie customs of the primitive Germans, to retain the 
kingship in the family of Charlemagne, elected Conrad, 
who was descended from him in the female line, as their 
king. But he proved unable to drive out the barbarians, 
who, during his reign, penetrated far. into Germany, or 
to subdue the pretensions to independence of the powerful 
Duke of the Saxons, Henry. On the death of Conrad, 
who had been mortally wounded in a battle against the 
invaders, and at his own suggestion just before his death, 
the nobles chose as his successor, in 919, his rival and 
enemy, Henry, Duke of the Saxons, known in history as 
Henry the Fowler. The Saxons, of whom he was the 
chief, it will be remembered, had proved the most obsti- 
nate and powerful of all Charlemagne's enemies. They 
were nominally subdued by him and made Christians, if 
the act of baptism forced upon them as an alternative for 
drowning could make them such. Since his death their 
strength (and they were the most powerful of all the 
German tribes) had been used to secure their own inde- 
j)endence, and therefore to destroy wliatever German 
unity existed under Charlemagne's policy. Their atti- 
tude changed when their chief was chosen king by his 
fellow-chieftains. Henry is said to be the true founder 
of modern Germany, and his pretensions are based upon 



164 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

this, that he really first gave Germany to herself free 
from the perpetual torrent of invasion which up to his 
time had constantly threatened to overwhelm it. He 
conquered the Wends to the east of the Elbe, he defeated 
the Northern Slavonic tribes on the frontiers of Saxony, 
and he drove back the Hungarians at Merseburg (933) 
with such frightful slaughter that they ceased thereafter 
to molest Germany. He did more, for he filled the fron- 
tier country with German colonists, who soon proved an 
effectual barrier against further invasion. These districts 
were called marhsj and their governors margraves, men 
selected by the king for their approved valor and capacity 
to guard and rule these outlying portions of Germany. 
Many of these marks became in the course of time, 
under the rule of a succession of able chiefs, kingdoms 
and duchies, with preponderant political influence in 
Germany. The present house of Prussia is descended 
from the first ruler of the mark of Brandenburg, and 
that of Austria from the chief of the Ostmark or Eastern 
mark, and of Styria or Stelermark. 

The German kings for the first three centuries and a 
half, and until the direct line in each became extinct, 
were taken from three great families or dynasties. These 
kings of Germany or of the Franks were chosen by the 
great vassals, and did not become such by hereditary 
right. Thus, the first dynasty was the Saxon, of which 
I have just spoken, and of which Henry the Fowler 
was chief. Its princes reigned from 919 to 1024; the 
second, that of Franconia, 1024-1125; and the third. 



FEUDAL INDEPENDENCE. 165 

that of Swabia or Hohenstauffen, 1138-1254. It is 
impossible, of course, to give even a sketch of the events 
wliich distinguished these reigns, or even the dynasties, 
in Germany. There are many illustrious names on the 
roll of these German kings, the Othos, the Henrys, and 
the Fredericks of history, but there is a weary sameness 
in the record of their reigns, which, so far as Germany was 
concerned, were taken up in perpetual and vain efforts 
made by the kings to subdue the independent spirit of 
the various princes and to bring them into subjection to 
the central royal authority. We see here, as I have said, 
that process of centralization and tendency to unity 
which marked the history of France reversed. The 
great vassals succumbed at last in that country to the 
king, and their fiefs were united to the crown; in Ger- 
many the feudal principle of separatism triumphed, and 
the fiefs became hereditary with sovereign authority 
remaining in the families of their original possessors. 
The principal parties to tiiis struggle for more than two 
centuries were the houses of Saxony and those of Fran- 
conia, and afterwards of Hohenstauffen, and their conflict 
gave rise to the historic names of Welf and Weiblingen, 
or, as they were afterwards called in Italy, Guelph and 
Ghibeline, the former representing in Germany oppo- 
sition to the kingly, as it did in Italy opposition to the 
Imperial power. 

The chief interest to the general student in the history 
of many of the illustrious men who were German kings 
of the first three dynasties is due to their having been 



166 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

at the same time Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, 
and to their relations in this clonble capacity with Italy 
and the Pope. Of these Ave shall speak presently. 
As German kings merely, these men had little real 
authority. They, or at least the earliest among them, 
had no fixed home, but kept moving about from one 
place to another throughout Germany, administering 
justice among their vassals, and preparing for war when 
not actually engaged in it. They had no settled revenue 
derived from taxation, and their private domain, whicii 
consisted principally of immense forests, was scattered 
throughout the Empire. The Germans still continued 
to regard every public tax, as they had done in their 
primitive days, as a badge of servitude. All services 
were rendered in person by their vassals. There was 
no regular armed force raised and maintained by the 
king as such : the army consisted Avholly of the feudal 
vassals and their followers, forming a sort of cavalry 
militia with the barons at its head. This array, which, 
by the conditions attached to the tiefs, served for a short 
period only, had been substituted for the ancient levy of 
freemen. The knights (Ritters) became not merely the 
leaders in battle, but were bound by the peculiar feudal 
ties to the immediate lord wdiom thay serv^ed, and thus 
devotion to their liege lord became the characteristic 
type of the warriors in that age, instead of that passion 
for independence and freedom by which the ancient 
Germans had become so greatly distinguished. There 
was no longer any Mallum or Champ de Mai, except, 



RISE OF FREE CITIES. 167 

perhaps, for the election of a khig. All the conspic- 
uous marks of the feudal system, as I have described 
them in France, existed in Germany also. The gloomy 
castle, and \\\q still gloomier life within it, the right of 
private war, the truce of God, the ceremonial of chiv- 
alry, the arbitrary rule, the miserable condition of the 
serfs, and the depressed state of tlie free rural laborers, 
— all these were to be found equally in both countries. 

Cities seem to have grown more rapidly in Germany 
than they did in France. Henry the Fowler, with 
true political sagacity, was the first, it is said, to induce 
the Saxons to dwell in towns. These rose round mili- 
tary stations, or under the shadow of those great cathe- 
drals the building of which lasted many years and 
drew near them necessarily large bodies of w^orkmen. 
These cities were true places of refuge to the oppressed 
vassals of the neighborhood, who fled to them to escape 
their master's arbitrary cruelty, and they soon became 
large communities. From germs like these grew up 
the famous cities of the Rhine country, Mentz, Worms, 
Speyer, Strasburg, Cologne, and, indeed, most of the 
great cities in every part of Germany conspicuous in 
mediaeval history. These cities were usually self-gov- 
erned ; that is, they were free from any feudal servitude 
except to the Emperor as overlord; but the laboring 
class in them was much oppressed by the burghers. 
They are known in history as the Free Cities of the Em- 
pire. I shall have something to say in another chapter 
concerning the trade and commerce of these cities as 



168 MED LEV AL HISTORY. 

elements in the progress of civilization. There can be 
no doubt that they were the great centres of what was 
most vigorous in the national life of the mediaeval era. 
They were usually fortified as a means of jirotection, and 
the principal buildings which they contained were the 
churches, especially the cathedrals, and the town halls. 
The two hundred years which succeeded the year 1000, 
which period had been looked forward to as that which 
had been appointed by the Almighty for the end of the 
world and for the final judgment, w^as the era of the 
glory of the Gothic architecture in Germany. Cathe- 
drals were begun in almost every considerable city whose 
architecture to this day excites the wonder and the ad- 
miration of the beholder. The history of the Gothic 
architecture does not throw much light upon the ques- 
tion how the striking contrast between the qualities 
which could produce these marvels of art and the char- 
acteristic rudeness of the age is to be accounted for. The 
glorious cathedrals which the traveller finds in all the 
old towns in Europe, as well as the grand town halls in 
the wealthy manufacturing cities of the Netherlands, 
have well been called books in stone, and are among the 
most wonderful monuments of the true life of the Mid- 
dle Age, ecclesiastical and municipal, little as we can 
comprehend the spirit which produced them. 

These cities were connected by those true agencies of 
civilization, public roads and highways. These roads, 
even in those rude days, extended along the valley of 
the Rhine from Basle to the ocean, and along the course 



TRADE IN THE FREE CITIES. l(jy 



of the Danube from Constantinople to Eatisbon, whence 
other roads branched off until they reached the great 
trading cities in Northern and Eastern Germany. Italy, 
too, was connected with Germany by roads over the va- 
rious passes of the Tyrolean Alps, on wliich was main- 
tained a constant traffic with the Italian cities, Germany 
receiving thus the coveted spices, silks, and precious 
stones of the East in exchange for the products of her 
mines, forests, and fisheries. It is not to be wondered 
at, then, that these cities were the true centres of civili- 
zation,^accordiug to our modern standard, in the Middle 
Age. The warlike deeds, the raids, and the plunder- 
ings of the haughty, fierce, and ignorant nobles who 
surrounded them have received, perhaps, an undue 
prominence in the history of the times. Nothing, in- 
deed, could well be more marked than the line which 
then divided the country from the city, or than the 
contempt with which the nobles regarded the inhabitants 
of towns who showed skill and gained money by the 
practice of the mechanic arts. While the citizens scorned 
their attempts to coerce i\\^ municipalities, and banded 
themselves together for common protection, the nobles 
often became mere plunderers of their merchandise in 
transit, and were well called robber-knights. 

But, as I have said, the position which the German 
kings, or kings of the Franks, held during the Middle 
Age at the head of the monarchs of Christendom, was 
especially due to this, that, while they were powerful 
kngs, they were, at the same time. Emperors of the 



170 MEDIyEVAL HISTORY. 

Holy Roman Empire. They were, in theory at least, 
world-monarchs. The title of king during the Middle 
Age had a certain technical limited meaning. It was 
appropriate only as designating a ruler over a definite 
territory or country. That of Emperor was applied to 
one who, after the manner of the ancient Roman Em- 
peror, was the universal ruler, or master of the world. 
There were many kings, but there could be but one 
Emperor. So Charlemagne was King of the Franks, 
that is, ruler of the dominions of that nation. As such 
he was a mighty potentate, governing all Western 
Europe. But when he was crowned by the Pope (800) 
Emperor, Imjperatoi' Semper Augustus, although he did 
not thereby gain a foot of territory, he became the suc- 
cessor and representative, according to the universal 
opinion of that age, of the most majestic power the 
world had ever seen, that of the Roman Empire ; and 
when the popular imagination, as well as the gratitude 
of the Church, recognized him as Csesar, that one word 
symbolized a man invested with the highest earthly 
dignity. 

I have already explained the theory of Charlemagne's 
relation to the Pope, and the grand scheme that was 
arranged for dividing the government of the world 
between them. The Emperorship was to have been 
hereditary in his family, but by the year 900 his pos- 
terity, to whom i\\Q government of Italy had been 
assigned at Verdun, was extinct, and those of his 
family in Germany who might have been entitled to 



THE EMPEROR 07710 L 171 



claim the lofty position and title of Roman Emperor 
were too much engaged in beating back the invaders of 
their native country to think of embarking upon for- 
eign expeditions in order to obtain the Imperial crown 
and the name of Cffisar. Meantime, certain princes of 
Italy, in the absence of the Germans, had the hardihood 
to take possession of the crown which had been worn by 
Charlemagne, and to call themselves Italian Emperors. 
These men have been called more properly " phantom 
Emperors,^' and it is very certain that they had neither 
the power, nor the lofty conceptions of the universal 
sway and important functions attached to the office, 
which had led Charlemagne to style himself successor 
of the Ciesars. Anarchy and confusion then prevailed 
everywhere in Italy, — a state of things caused chiefly 
by the infamous character of the Popes of the time, 
who disgraced St. Peter's seat, and by the constant 
struggles among the petty Italian chieftains for power. 

Under these circumstances, the Pope, John XII., 
whose power was threatened by one of these Italian 
Emperors, Berengar, in 962, called upon Otho, King 
of the Franks, the second King of Germany in the 
Saxon line, as his predecessors had called upon Pepin 
and Charlemagne, to rescue him from those Italian 
princes who defied his authority, and to resume that 
position in relation to the Holy See which Charlemagne 
had once occupied, and which it was said it had been 
his intention that the King of the Franks, as the fore- 
most of the people of Christendom, should always 



172 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 



occupy. Accordingly, Otbo descended into Italy with 
a large force, reconquered the country, and was crowned 
by the Pope, in 962, as Charlemagne had been, master 
and Euiperor of the whole world, or of the Roman 
Empire, for at that time both terms had the same 
meaning. Thus there was a renewal of the strange 
alliance between Germany and Italy. How far this 
revival involved the obligations which had been under- 
taken by Charlemagne and Leo it is not easy to decide, 
but it is certain that the new arrangement, like the old, 
was big with consequences not merely to Germa ly and 
to Italy, but to the future of the whole of Europe. 
The German kings as Roman Emperors did not hesi- 
tate to show their interpretation of the power conferred, 
by deposing one Pope after another. The plan did 
not work at all smoothly nor as the parties to it could 
have anticipated. History shows us each party striving 
to gain the advantage of the other in the interpreta- 
tion of the terms of the bargain ; and, whatever else 
may have grown out of it, discordant views concerning 
its meaning gave rise, among other things, no doubt, to 
the famous dispute about the ^'Investitures,^' to the sub- 
sequent downfall of the Imperial pow^r in Italy, and 
to the irreparable injury of Germany, not merely by 
rendering impracticable the relations into which the 
scheme brought its rulers in the Church and in the 
State, but also by employing the activity, energy, and 
resources of Germany in controlling foreign Italian poli- 
tics instead of directing them to advance home interests. 



THE EMPEROR'S WEAKNESS IN ROME. 173 

As I have said, Otho the Great regarded Italy as 
a conquered territory, and made its princes and cities 
feudal vassals ; but in regard to the papacy he appears 
as a reformer, striving to place persons of at least decent 
life and habits in St. Peter's chair. Although he had 
been sent for by the Pope to aid him in maintaining his 
pretensions, he was so shocked by the bad character and 
morals of those high in office in the Church, and the 
general corruption which prevailed at Rome under the 
papal authority, that, with the aid of a synod of ec- 
clesiastics which he convened, he deposed the reigning 
Pope, and put in his place his own secretary, a lay- 
man named Leo. It is a curious fact, however, that the 
Romans themselves, although often ruled by bad Popes, 
had so fierce a jealousy of the interference of foreigners 
in their affairs that on the many occasions upon which 
the Emperors were forced to occupy Rome during the 
Middle Ages for the purpose of restoring order by de- 
posing the Popes, no sooner had the work been done 
and the Emperor had left the city with his army, than 
the populace broke out in rebellion against the rule he 
established and restored that of the Pope. Nothing is 
clearer in mediaeval history than that the place where 
the great Emperor of the world always had least power 
and influence was in his own capital, the city of Rome. 

Still, the power to which that illustrious city gave the 

name and the jjresUge, shadowy as it was, retained for 

nges a strange fascination for these children of the 

North. Otho's grandson, third Emperor of the name, 

15* 



174 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

was not a mere rude and strong warrior, a typical chief 
of the Franlvs. He was a dreamer of great dreams, 
as Charlemagne had been, hut he lacked the force, the 
vigor, and the practical sagacity of that great man, by 
which his dreams might become realities. But his con- 
ception of his relations to the Church and his duties as 
Emperor were even more lofty. Nothing less would 
satisfy his imagination than a scheme for the abandon- 
ment of the kingship of Germany and a substitution of 
the Emperorship of the world for it, thus identifying 
himself wholly with the Roman Csesars by transferring 
the seat of empire to the city of Rome, and governing- 
Germany and the far-distant East, as the Caesars had 
done, as provinces. Fortunately for Germany at least, 
the proper government of which he would have aban- 
doned had this scheme been carried out, he died at' an 
early age. He lived long enough, however, to continue 
the reforming work of the German Emperors at Rome 
by nominating two Popes, both Germans, — one his 
cousin, and the other his preceptor (the celebrated Ger- 
bert, afterwards Sylvester II.), — in place of the profli- 
gate Italian priests who aspired to the papacy. It is to 
be observed that the opinion of Charlemagne that it was 
the duty of the world's Emperor so to use his power 
that the Pope, as God's vicegerent on earth, should be 
at least free from vices which were inconsistent with his 
lofty pretensions, and that his life should be such as not 
to be a matter of scandal to Christian people, — this 
duty, in an age of horril^le corruption, iniquity, and 



REFORMS WITHIN THE CHURCH. 175 

barbarism, was not neglected by Charlemagne's succes- 
sors. It really seems that without some such powerful 
champions for the right as these Emperors proved them- 
selves to be, the papacy in those days of darkness must 
have perished from its own rottenness. 

This reforming tendency is to be found not merely 
in the Emperors of the Saxon dynasty, but in those of 
the Franconian and Swabian line also. Henry III. 
deposed, without hesitation, three rival Poi)es, each of 
whom claimed to be the rightful one, and appointed 
their successors. All the kings of Germany of these 
dynasties made it almost the first business of their 
reigns to go to Italy to secure their possessions, to assert 
the authority in Church affiiirs which they claimed to 
have derived from Charlemagne, and to be crowned 
Emperor by the Pope at Rome. These Italian expe- 
ditions after a while produced abundant fruit, but not 
such as the Emperors had anticipated. The High 
Churchmen, if they may be so called, with the Popes 
at their head, began at last to learn the lessons taught 
by the German Emperors; but they felt that reform 
should begin within the Church and be carried out by 
its own authority, and not by that of laymen, not even 
the Emperor himself. In other words, what was needed, 
in their opinion, was discipline over the clergy, exer- 
cised only by the authority of the Church itself. 

At that time the crying abuses in the Church were 
simony, or the sale of ecclesiastical preferments for 
money, and a married clergy. The one placed the 



176 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

priests, it was supposed, too much in the power of 
wealthy and unscrupulous noblemen who shared with 
them the revenues of the Church lands, and the other 
withdrew them too much from their proper priestly 
duties, besides conflicting with the Churcli's ideal notion 
of priestly purity. In short, it was felt that the lay 
l)ower, from the Emperor down to the proprietor of the 
smallest benefice, had too much control in the admin- 
istration of Church affairs; and the device which was 
resorted to to get rid of this lay interference, even when 
put forth as a remedy for admitted evils, w^as one of the 
grandest and most audacious recorded in history, and 
was devised by the boldest and most remarkable man 
of the many remarkable men in the long roll of the 
Popes, — Hildebrand, Gregory YII. 

The dispute which brought into striking prominence 
the pretensions upon which this theory of the relation of 
the civil and ecclesiastical power was founded is called 
that of the Investitures; and it arose in this way. Greg- 
ory VII., fully convinced that the greatest evil of the 
Church in his time was its thorough secularization, on 
his accession in 1075 issued a decree providing that 
hereafter no bishop should receive his office or be in- 
vested with the temporalities belonging to it from any 
layman under conditions of service to such layman, 
and that no payment of money should be made for ob- 
taining such an office, under the penalties of simony. 
In Germany, Henry lY., of the Franconian dynasty, 
was then king, and the result of the decree, if enforced, 



HENRY IV. AND HILDEBRAND. 177 

would have betii to deprive him of a large revenue, for 
tlie clergy of all degrees held their estates by feudal in- 
vestiture from him and occupied nearly half of the ter- 
ritory of his kingdom. As long as the king appointed 
the bishops, he in a great measure dictated the ecclesi- 
astical policy of his nominees, and of course, as donor 
of their lands and their incomes, controlled them. 
Henry refused to obey the decree of Gregory VII., and 
convened a synod in Germany which deposed the Pope. 
The Pope replied by excommunicating Henry, who was 
the first German sovereign whom the Popes had dared 
to attack in this way (1076). This excommunication 
legally (by canon law) released his subjects from their 
obedience, and the result was, under the influence of the 
Saxon nobles, who had always been jealous because the 
Emperor had been taken from the rival Franconian 
house instead of their own, that a general defection of 
his subjects became imminent. The king — or Emperor, 
rather, for he liad been crowned Emperor by the Pope 
— found that he was overmastered by the Church, and 
intimated that his desire was to submit to the Pope and 
receive absolution. It ended, as is well known, in the 
extraordinary spectacle of the world's titular master pre- 
senting himself (1077), clad as a penitent, at the gate 
of the castle of Canossa, in the Apennines, waiting for 
four days and nights exposed to a snow-storm, until 
the haughty Pontiff thought the Emperor sufficiently 
humbled to be received by him and upon his complete 
submission to be readmitted to the bosom of the Church 



178 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

by absolution. This picture of the utter prostration of 
the lay power at the feet of the ecclesiastical is one of the 
most striking in history ; but it is hardly more extraor- 
dinary than the reasons which are given to explain and 
justify it. Henry's submission, as the event proved, 
was feigned ; but the Church never forgot the lesson of 
the vastness of its power taught by this humiliating 
scene. Gregory's claim was not novel, and it has never 
been abandoned ; but it had never been enforced by the 
Church in such a manner as this. It was nothing less 
than a claim not only that the spiritual power was the 
first and highest and controlling element in human so- 
ciety, but that it included the right to command the 
temporal, and, in case of need, to compel its obedience. 
While Gregory's vigor undoubtedly reformed much 
that was evil in the Church, his lofty pretensions, based 
on the theocratic principle, set an example to the Inno- 
cents and the Bonifaces of later days for using that 
power for far less worthy purposes, while the claim and 
its enforcement roused an intensely anti-papal feeling 
in Germany, especially in the cities, which grew in 
strength and bitterness until the time of the Reforma- 
tion. Hence this quarrel about the Investitures has an 
important bearing upon the course of German history. 

The same may be said of the other great quarrel 
between Germany and Italy during the Middle Age, — 
that of Frederick Barbarossa and his grandson, Frederick 
II., with the Italian cities, concerning their claim to be 
freed from feudal servitude to the German Emperors, — 



THE EMPEROR AND THE LOMBARD LEAGUE. 179 



a dispute which was complicated by the interference of 
the Pope on behalf of the cities. Tlie German Emperors 
had, as I have explained, conquered Italy over and over 
again since the days of Charlemagne. Both the princes 
and the cities were, according to the strictest interpreta- 
tion of the 4aw then universally prevailing, the feuda- 
tories of the Emperor, and as such were bound to render 
him the customary feudal services. As the cities in 
Italy, and especially in Lombardy, grew richer and more 
powerful, and the Emperors of the house of Franconia 
less able, owing to their troubles with their vassals 
in Germany, to maintain their feudal rights in Italy, 
there grew up, particularly in Milan, a determined spirit 
of resistance to these claims of the Emperor. When 
the family of Swabia or Hohenstauffen succeeded that of 
Franconia, Frederick Barbarossa determined to coerce 
these cities into obedience, and in 1154 he crossed the 
Alps with a large army and was crowned King of Lom- 
bardy at Pavia. Frederick seems to have been a sort of 
Imperial Hildebrand, and with as high an idea of the 
soundness of his title to be the world-monarch as that 
haughty Pontiff had of his own to supreme rule. This 
temper guided him both in his dealings with the Pope 
and with the rebellious cities of Lombardy. He in- 
sisted that ^'the Imperial crown was independent, and 
he ascribed his possession of it to the Divine goodness 
only." 

With these notions of his prerogative, he proceeded to 
show how much he was in earnest in his intention of 



180 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

exercising it, not only by attacking Milan, which had re- 
fused to recognize his feudal sovereignty and render the 
tribute due, but, after gaining possession of the city, by 
utterly destroying it, levelling its buildings to the ground, 
and giving the inhabitants only eiglit days to remove 
from its territory. The cities of Lonibar<^y were for a 
time stunned by this terrible blow, but they soon recov- 
ered, and, on some reverses of the Emperor occurring, 
formed a league to oppose him, called the Lombard 
League, to which nearly all the great cities of North-' 
ern Italy adhered, and set about rebuilding Milan 
and defying the Emperor. In this they were aided by 
the Pope, Alexander III., and a memorable and decisive 
battle was fought between this league of Lombard cities 
and the Emperor at Legnano in 1176, in which the 
Emperor was completely defeated. This battle I call 
memorable, for it is the first instance in the history of 
the Middle Age in which municipalities joined together 
in successful resistance to one of the great sovereigns of 
Europe ; and it was decisive not merely because the result 
was, after some years, the permanent establishment of the 
municipal freedom of these great towns, but also because 
it was the principal cause of the end of that German 
domination in Italy which had continued, practically 
unbroken, from the time of Charlemagne. The Hohen- 
stauffens became extinct on the death of the brilliant 
Frederick II., grandson of Barbarossa, and his son, 
whose heroic deeds are more particularly connected with 
the history of Italy than with that of Germany. After 



RUDOLPH. OF HAPSBURG. 181 

their death the German Emperors ceased any more to vex 
that country on the plea that they were the successors of 
Charlemagne, and, as such, world-monarchs. How far 
the unity and progress of Germany were retarded by 
the efiPorts of its rulers for nearly five centuries to secure 
the possession of Italy, and by their expending the re- 
sources of Germany on that object, it is not easy to say. 
The policy which persistently wasted so much and gained 
so little seems to most modern historians a fatal one. 

The confusion and anarchy in Germany on the extinc- 
tion of the house of Hohenstauffen were so great that 
a considerable period elapsed, called the Interregnum 
(1254-1272), before the nobles in that country could 
find any one with serious qualifications for the office of 
Emperor. After the reigns of several Emperors of the 
Houses of Luxemburg and Bavaria, they cliose for that 
office Kudolph of Hapsburg, who did not belong to any 
one of the ruling families of the ancient tribes. He 
held extensive fiefs in Swabia, Switzerland, and Alsace, 
and by choosing him Germany was spared at least from 
those wars of rival families which had brought so much 
misery upon the land. The first need of the time was 
the restoration of public order; and Rudolph was chosen 
with the hope of attaining that object. How much it 
was needed is shown by the story that he earned, when 
a private nobleman, the gratitude and confidence of the 
Archbishop of Mentz by escorting him in safety through 
Southern Germany and the passes of Switzerland on a 
journey to Rome, whither he was forced to go to receive 

16 



182 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

from the Pope the pallium^ the proper symbolical inves- 
titure of his see. As the Archbishop was one of the 
Electors of the Emperor, his influence in securing tlie 
election of Rudolph was all-powerful, and proved suc- 
cessful ; but what a strange picture of the lawless state 
of society is that of the Primate of Germany unable 
to go to Rome to secure his office without the constant 
protection of a powerful noble, whose fidelity to his 
promise seemed as much a cause of wonder as of 
gratitude ! 

Rudolph made no attempt, as his predecessors had 
done, to reduce his great vassals in Germany to feudal 
obedience. Their fiefs had long been hereditary, and 
their chiefs were practically sovereign, with a mere 
nominal dependence upon the Emperor; and he was 
content so to leave them. His object was to restore 
order : in doing so he determined that the law of brute 
force should cease throughout Germany. He subdued 
the robber-knights, who in those evil times did not 
hesitate to plunder jDeaceful traders; and with the same 
object in view he placed the powerful King of Bohemia 
under the ban of the Empire, defeated him in a great 
'battle, 1276, and, with the consent of the nobles, took 
possession of the districts of Austria, Styria, Carinthia, 
and Carniola, and erected them into au Imperial fief, 
which he gave to his sons, and thus founded the terri- 
torial dominion of his descendants, the reio^nino^ house 
of Austria, in the present Archduchy and its de])end- 
encies. The Imperial name and authority seem to have 



THE ELECTORS OF THE EMPEROR, 183 

lost all their early prestige in this family, presenting no 
longer to men's minds a grand conception of universal 
monarchy having for its ideal object the securing of 
universal right and justice, but becoming, after the loss 
of Italy, not even a means of making Germany strong 
and united, and serving as a powerful instrument of 
aggrandizing the dynastic interests of that Hapsburg 
family from which the Emperors for nearly five centu- 
ries were taken. The title of Roman Emperor and the 
ceremonial of the Imperial court were kept up until 
both were swept away by the battle of Austerlitz in 
1806 ; but it was all an empty show ; the true Empire 
had fallen, to rise no more, and it is hard to discover any 
resemblance between Charlemagne, whose Empire was 
only another name for the conquest of civilization, and 
the descendants of Kudolph of Hapsburg, who became 
powerful by selling the Imperial rights and jurisdic- 
tions to their subjects and by intermarriage with the 
richest and most powerful families of Europe. 

The Electors of the Emperor, constituted such by the 
Golden Bull of Charles IV. (1356), were seven men of 
the highest dignity in the Empire, who were supposed to 
represent the Church and the principal ancient tribes of 
Germany, — the Archbishops of Mentz, of Cologne, and 
of Treves for the former, and the King of Bohemia, 
the Duke of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenburg, and 
the Count Palatine of the Rhine for the latter. The 
lay representation in the Electoral College was some- 
what changed as time went on, but, as has been said, a 



184 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

member of the house of Hapsbiirg was always its choice 
for Emperor. The Imperial office in this family ceased 
to be, as Voltaire says, either Holy, or Roman, or Apos- 
tolic. He who held it had neither power nor possessions 
as Emperor, although as Archduke of Austria he held 
extensive territories in Germany; and the result was that 
tlie history of that country under the Hapsburgs, down 
to the time of the lleformation, presents a condition of 
disorganization and anarchy in which public order and 
security were hardly more firmly settled than in the 
wildest license of feudal times. 

The old law of force seemed again the only law. The 
fourteenth century, when this misrule was at its height, 
is the epoch of insurrections against arbitrary tyranny 
in Germany. The revolt of the Swabian towns, and the 
heroic and successful resistance of the Swiss, whose 
country then formed part of Germany, to the power of 
the house of Austria, as exhibited on the battle-fields 
of Morgarten and Sempach, were the first rays of light 
shining in a dark place. In Switzerland — and it is a 
significant fact — the contest was not merely for the free- 
dom of the towns from feudal servitude, but for the 
independence of the country ; and they secured it. 
During all this time there was in Germany none of that 
gradual unfolding and development of national life 
tending towards national unity observable in the his- 
tory of other important countries of Europe towards 
the close of the Middle Age, and no mitigation of the 
hardships of the feudal system which bore so severely 



THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE. 185 

on the rural laborers, whether serfs or villehis. In the 
towns, it is true, the condition was somewhat better; for 
the inhabitants, especially of the free cities, were in a 
measure able to take care of themselves. 

History may be searched in vain for a better illustra- 
tion of unrelieved selfishness on the part of the rulers 
than that observable in the two hundred and fifty 
years in Germany preceding the Reformation. There 
seemed to be but one subject upon which all, Emperor 
and vassal, were agreed, and that was a detestation of 
the pretensions of the Pope to interfere with the civil 
power in Germany, to which, perhaps, may be added a 
desire on all hands to weaken even the supreme ecclesias- 
tical authority hitherto conceded to him. The Council 
of Constance, held in 1414 and presided over by the 
Emperor, was the last occasion on which Latin Christen- 
dom acted as one commonwealth under a recognized chief, 
and was called in order to settle the claims of rivals 
to the papacy and to reform the crying abuses of the 
Church. Although it declared, delegates from all the 
Christian countries being present, that the decision of a 
General Council was of superior authority to that of the 
Pope, yet it maintained its orthodoxy, nevertheless, by 
condemning to death John Huss and Jerome of Prague 
as heretics, and encouraged the Emperor, as the armed 
champion of the orthodox faith, to attack Bohemia, their 
country, with a large army, and to exterminate their 
followers. This was a task, it may be said, in which the 
German princes joined with the Emperor in undertaking 

16* 



186 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

with much greater alacrity tlian they did in that of 
resisting the advance of tlie Ottoman Turks, who in 
1456 marched towards Germany up the valley of the 
Danube, and wlio were driven back not by Germans with 
their Emperor at their head, but by the valor and con- 
duct of a monk and of an Hungarian nobleman. 

This is not the place to speak of the ecclesiastical abuses 
prevalent in Germany, from which the population suf- 
fered quite as much, but in a different way, as from the 
misrule and disorganization of the civil power. Tlie 
special iniquities for which the Church was held respon- 
sible, whether justly or not, contributed with the fright- 
ful tyranny and exactions of the feudal lords to produce 
a general condition of discontent, which rapidly grew 
into an intense craving for change, and every favorable 
opportunity for revolt was embraced, as was seen genera- 
tions afterwards in the eagerness with which the anti- 
papal doctrines of the E,eformation were adopted, and in 
the violent outbreak contemporaneous with it known as 
the Peasants' War. The rapid revolutionary character 
of this movement in Germany was unlike tliat produced 
by the spirit of change elsewhere. The reason is not far 
to seek. The great forces which sooner or later in each 
country brought about that great change, called the 
Renaissance, which marks their transition from mediaeval 
to modern history, such as the invention of printing and 
of gunpowder, the discovery of America, and the revival 
of the study of the Greek literature, were met by ob- 
stacles very different and much more formidable in the 



RESULTS OF DECENTRALIZATION. 187 

condition of German society than those which they en- 
countered in other parts of Europe. At that time France, 
under Louis XI., had at last become a nation in reality, 
as well as in name, by the annexation of all the great 
fiefs to the crown. In England the Wars of t\\Q Roses 
were ended, forever destroying the overgrown power of 
the great nobles, and rendering the Tudors tlie most 
absohite of English sovereigns. Even in Spain a great 
nation had been created by the union of the crowns of 
Castile and of Aragon. But in Germany the feudal sys- 
tem, the type of an unprogressive state, still survived, 
and there was no power which could so mould the results 
of the recent triumphs of mind over matter as to 
strengthen and develop the true national life. Whatever 
Germans may have done in the work of the world as a 
race from the time of Rudolph of Hapsburg to that of 
tlie French Revolution was done in spite of their gov- 
ernments, while local separatism and rival jealousies 
between different parts of the Fatherland have been the 
main causes of its weakness. 



CHAPTER VII. 

SAXON AND DANISH ENGLAND. 

The early history of England has, for many reasons, 
special interest for the American student. In the first 
place, it is the history of an important period in the life 
of our own race. Whatever relates to the origin of a 
life so distinct and peculiar, the growth of which has 
resulted in building up a national type wholly unlike 
any other in history, concerns us as much to know as if 
we were modern Englishmen. Besides, we must pos- 
sess some knowledge of early English history in order 
that we may understand the full meaning and historical 
growth of our own national life as a people of English 
blood and speaking the English language. 

Of all the progressive civilizations of the world, that 
of the English race is essentially an historical civiliza- 
tion, — that is, one in which every change is the out- 
growth of a previous condition. The proudest boast of 
an Englishman is, that his claim to certain fundamental 
personal rights rests upon the ancient and undoubted 
right and privilege of the people of the realm, and 
especially that his title to the enjoyment of these riglits 
is derived from prescription and immemorial usage, the 
date of their origin being expressed by the legal phrase, 

*^ a period during which the memory of man runneth 

188 



HISTORICAL BASIS OF ENGLISH LIFE. 189 

not to the contrary." On the Continent, especially 
durhig the last hundred years, the old age of an existing 
political institution has been regarded as a defect rather 
than as a merit; its historical life has been sacrificed 
without hesitation if it did not fulfil the conditions of 
improvement formulated by some newly-announced phi- 
losophical theory supposed to be of universal applica- 
tion. The English, on the contrary, in spite of the 
temptation held out to induce them to adopt these 
general political truths for the practical uses of govern- 
ment simply because they were true, and in spite of the 
example of the nations on the Continent, have clung ob- 
stinately to their old ways, simply, it would seem very 
often, because they were old. This has been due not 
merely to a greater caution on the part of Englishmen 
in making changes for fear of evil results, but also to 
the English mind having been so constituted and trained 
that in politics, at least, there has always been an inborn 
belief, which has grown with the growth of the race, 
that everything worth preserving in their system has an 
historical basis. It believes that permanent political 
institutions are not made, but grow, and that while as 
time goes on, and the condition of the world changes, 
some modifications of the superstructure may be per- 
mitted, yet the foundations must always be embedded in 
the historical life of the nation. 

The English Constitution, of which we hear so much, 
is merely a collection of historical precedents, and for that 
reason it is held in highest reverence ; and the common 



190 MEDLEVAL HISTORY. 

law, wliicb is only another name for immemorial usage, 
strange to say, is called in England the perfection of 
human reason. In a very important sense, then, Eng- 
lishmen are almost fanatics concerning the value of the 
lessons taught by their own history as guides for their 
present action : whatever growth or evolution there may 
be in their system must proceed on its own lines, and 
not be the result of forces which have been strangers to 
their national life. Their ideal is strength, not con- 
gruity or harmony in accordance with general political 
theories. Their Gothic structure, in their own estima- 
tion, even if it lacks some modern conveniences, serves 
to shelter them, and they proudly point to its strength 
and durability as its chief merit, unwilling to run the 
risk of change merely to make its rugged exterior con- 
form to the laws of harmony, symmetry, and propor- 
tion, as understood elsewhere. 

In this country there is not much danger of our 
adopting conservative or cast-iron ideas in regard to 
the movement of life around us, and maintaining them, 
according to the English practice, simply because they 
are old and are supposed, therefore, to be well tried. 
Our fault is perhaps the opposite one, that we give all 
new ideas a too easy and generous hospitality, and that 
we are only too ready to try experiments. But we can 
no more get rid of English precedents, upon which our 
system, equally with theirs, is based, or tlie habits which 
they have fostered, than we can get rid of our English 
speech or of our English blood. It would be very 



AMERICAN HISTORICAL LIFE. 191 

iiuclesirable if we could do so, for, whatever we may 
owe to other influences, that which is most characteristic 
of us, that which has formed the element of tough- 
ness and strength which has made us triumph where 
weaker nations have fallen, is unmistakably a political 
education due to English origin and English growth. 
These are some of the reasons which should induce 
Americans to study English history, and especially 
its growth from the earliest times. In a very im- 
portant sense such a study is the study of our own 
history, going down, as it were, into the very deptiis 
from which all English-speaking people have been 
taken, and exploring them to find out how the English 
race has been able to do so large a work in the world's 
history. 

But such a study has even a nearer and more special 
interest for us. The three great characteristic facts of 
American history at present evolved are these: 1. The 
fusion of a great variety of races over a vast continent, 
and that in a comparatively short time, not merely 
into one nation, but into one civilization, and the pre- 
dominance of English law and English ideas over all 
others as the result of that fusion. 2. A general re- 
spect and obedience to law, as such, throughout the 
country, with all the restraining influence which such 
a habit imposes. 3. The establishment of a govern- 
ment federative in its form, but national in its power. 
Our experience in regard to the first of these two char- 
acteristic facts or outgrowths of our condition is merely 



192 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

a repetition of the course of early English history, only, 
of course, upon a much larger scale. England is made 
up, as our country has been, by a fusion of races, the 
Anglo-Saxon element witli her, as with us, always pre- 
dominant. She has had to combine, as we have done, 
for the full development of her national life, Celts 
with Romans, Saxons with Scandinavians, Teutons with 
Latins. Like ourselves, she has known how to make 
them members of the same family, and in this lies 
her strength. How she did it we shall hope to tell, 
and the study of the process is full of practical lessons 
for us. 

In a previous chapter we have explained how this 
process of assimilation which took place in all tlie 
nations which had originally formed portions of the 
Roman Empire, and which were invaded by the Ger- 
man tribes, was accomplished in certain portions of the 
Continent. In France its final outcome was centraliza- 
tion and despotism ; in Germany, feudal separatism and 
weakness; in England, after a long struggle, liberty 
founded on law. The mere fusion of a number of 
tribes into a homogeneous people upon the same terri- 
tory, with the recognized leadership of that one among 
them which had shown itself most powerful, seems at 
first a very simple matter, almost insignificant as a 
force affecting the general current of civilization ; and 
yet history tells us that England and the nations on the 
Continent differ as they do because this force was so 
differently applied in these different countries. And 



ROMAN CONQUEST. 193 

so with that second characteristic fact of oar civih'za- 
tion, the habit of reverence for law as such, and the 
self-restraint which that habit imposes, — this too comes 
to us from England as our most precious inheritance; 
and perhaps the most valuable practical lesson we learn 
when we study English history is the manner in which 
this habit grew up even among the wild tribes who con- 
tended there in early times for the mastery, and how, 
once fixed in the English character, it has saved them, 
as it saved us and all English-speaking people, from 
the excesses of revolutionary force and violence which 
have usually characterized the struggles for change in 
Continental countries. 

We must confine ourselves chiefly to seeking out the 
characteristics of the English race as shown in their 
earlier history which have been more or less reproduced 
in our own national life and history, and explaining 
their applications. England, as we know, was brought 
to the knowledge of the Roman world by the invasion 
of Caesar, B.C. 55. He found there a population of 
fierce barbarians, whose resistance to his invasion was as 
obstinate as it was unexpected, and he wisely decided 
that his project for the conquest of the island at that 
time should be given up. For nearly a hundred years 
no further attempt was made by the Romans to subdue 
and occupy the country. The tribes which then inhab- 
ited it were Celtic, and the strongest, perhaps the only, 
bond which united them was their religion. Of this, 

the chief officers and priests were called Druids^ who 

17 



194 MEDL'EVAL HISTORY. 

at the saaie time were their bards who celebrated their 
heroic exploits in war ; and to the Romans at least their 
religion and the influence of the Drnids were insepara- 
bly associated with the obstinate defence of the conntry 
against their arms. But we know almost nothing of 
these primitlv^e people. We must not rest on Mr. Ten- 
nyson's fascinating pictures of King Arthur and the 
Knights of the Round Table as trustworthy sources 
of information, for history tells us little about them. 
Their chief interest to us lies in their relations with 
their Roman conquerors, and we are curious to know 
how and in what way the assimilating power of Roman 
civilization during four centuries affected them. 

The final conquest took place under the Emperor 
Claudius in a.d. 61. Tiie natives in their despair 
showed, in the defence of their country, the most deter- 
mined courage, and Caractacus, or Caradoc, and Boadicea, 
Queen of the Iceni, as their leaders, are among the fore- 
most of the early English heroes. But no nation or 
tribe in the older world could withstand for a long period 
tTie irresistible force of the Roman arms. The Celtic 
Britons were no exception, and after a most obstinate re- 
sistance they too became Romanized, after the manner 
adopted by the Empire in conquered districts. The 
Roman occupation was organized ; in other words, their 
military rule was arranged according to the uniform 
pattern. Two prefects representing the Emperor were 
appointed for the government of the country, — the one 
residing at London, the other at York. The first care 



THE ROMAN RULE. 195 

of the Rotiians upon the occupation of a conquered coun- 
try was the making of roads which brouglit their military 
posts into easy communication. \\\ the second century 
three legions were stationed in England, — one, each, at 
York, at Chester, and at Caerleon-on-Usk, on the borders 
of Wales. Accordingly, one great road, called Watling 
Street, extended from London to Chester northwesterly, 
another led immediately north from London to York, 
another through the Eastern counties to Cambridge and 
Lincoln, and still another westward from London to 
Bath. There was also a road from the coast to London 
by way of Canterbury. Roman military stations were 
found in other parts of the country which are important 
in history as the nuclei of future towns and cities, and as 
centres from which civilization gradually radiated into 
the surrounding country, a large portion of which at that 
time was made up of dense forests and impenetrable 
morasses. A motley array of traders and camp-fol- 
lowers grew up around these military stations, which 
soon became colonies in Avhich the life and manners 
were wholly Roman. In them were soon to be found 
those invariable accompaniments of Roman civilization, 
— the bath, the forum, and sometimes, in the most im- 
portant of them, the amphitheatre. 

During the Roman domination some of these towns 
became, after the Roman pattern, municipia, and, in 
subordination to the central government, self-governing. 
They had their prefects, their SGahini, their curiales, as 
in other portions of the Empire, who performed duties 



196 MEDIyEVAL HISTOR V. 

in these cities similar to those which I have described 
as devolving on officers of the same name in the Roman 
cities in Gaul. It is important for us to remember that 
these city governments were the predecessors, and in a 
certain sense the models of the organization, of the 
municipal corporations of modern times, with their 
mayor, aldermen, and common council. The life of 
the Koman camps, out of Avhich these cities grew, was 
not without great influence upon their subsequent his- 
tory. They became fortresses, and as such capabfe of 
protecting their inhabitants, and centres of knowledge, 
wealth, and power, able to preserve in the worst of 
times the traditions at least of local self-government. 
In the time of the Homan domination they were gov- 
erned by the Roman law, wdiich, bad as it was as far as 
the liberty of the citizen was concerned, was at any rate 
better than the barbarism which ruled the country dis- 
tricts, peopled by the wild Celts, around them. These 
cities were at least training-schools for a larger and more 
liberal public life. 

When the Romans left the country, the framework 
of their organization of city life at least remained. The 
meetings of the curia became gradually transformed 
into the Saxon gemotes^ wdiere some rude principle of 
representation was recognized ; and the Roman basilica 
became the Saxon guildhall, in which the judge and 
jury were substituted for the Roman Judex, who w^as 
both the interpreter of the law and the judge of the 
facts. Many of these towns became, during the Roman 



RELA TIONS OF THE ROMANS TO THE CELTS. 197 

occupation, comparatively important manufacturing 
places. The peace which the Roman rule enforced 
favored trade and commerce. The mines of iron, tin, 
and lead were worked to great advantage; and we must 
infer that the country produced immense supplies of 
food when we read that under the Emperor Julian 
(a.d. 358) eight hundred vessels were employed in the 
corn trade between the English coast and the Eoman 
colonies on the Rhine. 

There was constant intercourse, of course, between 
the military colonists of the towns and the native 
population of the country districts, and possibly some 
intermarriages ; yet it is a curious fact that outside of 
these towns the Roman language, religion, and law 
seemed to have had no power of assimilation with the 
native growth, nor have we any evidence that any was 
attempted. We must look to a later period in English 
history, and as a result of a later conquest, for the in- 
corporation into its life of that Latin culture by which 
it became at length so enriched. Great as was the Ro- 
man power during its domination in Britain, it is some- 
what surprising, when we remember that it lasted nearly 
four centuries, to find that it did not leave deeper and 
more enduring marks on the life of the country. To 
sum up, the occupation of Britain by the Romans, as it 
has been well said, was, like the French colonization of 
Algeria, chiefly an occupation for military purposes, and 
hence it never took any very deep root in the soil. The 

government was military for the Roman legions and the 

17* 



198 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

country districts, and municipal for the large towns; the 
conquerors were unsympathetic and hard ; and thus it is, 
perhaps, that we have not now a Romanized England, 
as we have a Romanized France and Spain. 

The Roman military occupation of Britain ceased in 
410, when the troops stationed there were withdrawn 
in order to defend Italy against the threatened invasion 
of the Goths and Burgundians. The country soon fell 
into the possession of numerous native chiefs with a 
very feeble bond of union between them, and in this 
condition its rulers were forced to withstand the formi- 
dable inroads of the Picts, who were merely native 
Britons who had been driven by the Roman conquest 
to take refuge in the Highlands of Scotland. They 
were in league with a tribe of marauders from Ireland, 
strangely enough then called Scoti. The story of Vor- 
tigern and of the beautiful but faithless Rowena, and 
of Hengist and Horsa, may be apocryphal in some 
of its details, but there can be no doubt that the rulers 
of Britain, whoever they were, in 449 resolved, in 
their weakness, to call in the aid, for the defence of the 
country against these Picts and Scots, of those whom 
we have been in the habit of calling Anglo-Saxons, but 
who are now spoken of as "par excellence English. 
These Anglo-Saxons were of the same race as the 
Northmen, then known in England only as pirates or 
sea-rovers, with a high reputation for that sort of mili- 
tary skill which rests upon reckless bravery and love 
of adventure. These warriors, who at different times 



WHENCE THE ANGLO-SAXONS CAME. 199 

assailed different portions of the English coast, proved 
on their arrival, as miglit have been expected, con- 
querors rather than allies of the people who had in- 
vited them to assist in the defence of their country 
against its internal enemies. Surely and steadily, if 
slowly, they drove back the native Britons, resolving to 
occupy the country permanently, and striving to blot 
from its surface every trace of the two peoples who had 
previously possessed it, even going so far, it is said, as to 
remove the Roman mile-stones from the roads. 

Who, then, were these English, now so called, who 
marked their advance into the country afterwards called 
by their name with such devastation? They were Saxon 
tribes, of the Teutonic race, from the shores of the Ger- 
man Ocean, settled in the territory between the rivers 
Elbe and Weser, and, like all the tribes of the North at 
that j^eriod, they had gained their power by the renown 
attached to their achievements as sea-rovers. But their 
conquest of England shows that they were as formi- 
dable in the use of their military power on land as at 
sea. The advance-guard of these tribes was called 
Jutes, and their point of attack was Kent, the south- 
eastern county of England. This they soon subdued 
and erected it into a Jutish kingdom, with Canterbury 
as its capital. A few years later, another band of ma- 
rauders, Saxons, took possession of the territory west 
of Kent and established what was afterwards known as 
the kingdom of Sussex, or the South Saxon country. 
Still later, another tribe, under the command of Cerdic 



200 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

and Cymric, landed at Southampton, and, although their 
progress into the interior was delayed by a terrible de- 
feat which they suffered at the hands of the celebrated 
British prince Arthur, they succeeded in founding the 
Saxon kingdom of Wessex, or of the West Saxons. This 
was the most extensive in point of territory which the 
invaders had yet established, and it was destined, under 
a succession of able kings, to gain for a time at least the 
supremacy or overlordship of all the Saxon settlements 
in England. Still later, the Saxons in Germany, em- 
boldened by the success of their countrymen in the south 
of England, landed on the east coast and took possession 
of the country, penetrating far into the interior both on 
the north and south of the river Humber, carrying dev- 
astation wherever they went, naming the lands on the 
north of that river Northumbria, and those to the south 
East Ano^lia, while the territorv to the west was called 
Mid Anglia, or Mercia, or the Mark. These seven king- 
doms were formerly called the Saxon Heptarchy ; but 
later researches have shown that there was in reality no 
common government among them, and that the superior- 
ity of Wessex at one time or of Mercia at another was 
due to the greater force of one or the other kingdom for 
the time being. So slowly and gradually did the suc- 
cessive occupation of the various Saxon tribes take 
place in England, that a hundred and fifty years elapsed 
before the conquest was finally completed. The settle- 
ment of the country after this conquest has usually been 
considered as forming the true foundation of English 



ANGLO-SAXON TRAITS IN GERMANY. 201 



life as we know it in modern times. It was a genuine 
transplantation of Teutonic Saxondom into English soil, 
and neither age nor environment has destroyed its vital 
energy. We must study, therefore, the nature of the 
original seed, and of the soil to which it was removed. 
We shall find in it the germ of much that is character- 
istic of our modern English and American life. 

The Saxons, in their native country, and long after 
they took up their abode in England, dwelt in what 
are called ''^village communities,^^ in which each family 
possessed a homestead. These villages were surrounded 
by the mark, or gau^ or, in more modern language, the 
common, which was the undivided property of the fami- 
lies in the village, and was cultivated by them for their 
common benefit in certain proportions as decided by the 
assembly, or witan, composed of the heads of the fami- 
lies. Here were also settled all questions affecting the 
community. These communities were bound together 
as families, and not as individuals, the family being re- 
sponsible for the acts of each of its members; and it 
received, in like manner, the coraijensation paid for 
wrong and injury done to any one of them. The 
North Germans were always farmers when not engaged 
in warlike expeditions. I have explained how strong 
were the efforts made by the first of the Saxon Em- 
perors, Henry the Fowler, to induce the tribesmen to 
live in cities and not in small villages scattered through 
the country, and how important his success in the meas- 
ures he took for that purpose has been considered as 



202 MEDL-EVAL HISTORY. 

promoting civilization in Germany. So, in England, 
the Saxon invaders, for a long time, shunned residence 
in the Roman cities. They preferred their village organ- 
ization, which, with tithings, or districts of ten families, 
hundreds, with a hundred families each, and shires, with 
a certain number of hundreds, continued, with various 
well-defined powers, responsibilities, and duties annexed 
to them, far into the Middle Age. 

The Saxon invaders were coarse feeders and hard 
drinkers, and, in order to liv^e in the climate and with 
the scant resources supplied by nature, they were forced 
to become steady and persistent workers, at least in time 
of peace. They are said to have been domestic in their 
habits, and to have been fond of their wives and children. 
Whether this was due to the climate, which forbade out- 
door amusements, as Mr. Taine says, or to their having 
looked upon their women, as Tacitus says, as possess- 
ing something of divine qualities and to be reverenced 
accordingly, I cannot undertake to decide : however this 
may be, we are to look upon the peculiar English idea of 
home, with its incalculable influence in history upon the 
national character, as based very much upon the ancient 
Ano:lo-Saxon's love of his hearth-stone. In Eno^land 
and in the best English literature the wife and the mother 
are the highest types of womanhood ; in more southern 
and Latin countries a totally different type of woman is 
recognized as the most exalted, — one which the imagina- 
tion invests with grace and elegance and passion, very 
unlike that of the perfect English or American woman. 



THREE CLASSES AMONG THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 203 



There were three classes of men among the Anglo- 
Saxons in their own country,— the noble, the common 
freeman, and the slave ; and this fundamental organiza- 
tion of the whole Teutonic, I may say of the whole 
Aryan, world, they brought with them into England 
when they came as conquerors, and it formed the basis 
of their settlement there. As this was perhaps the most 
indestructible of all their political institutions, and as it 
has been more fruitful than any other in moulding their 
ideas of government, not only in England but among 
all English-speaking people, ourselves included, we must 
examine it with some care. 

In the Saxon tongue these three classes were named 
Ealdormen, Ceorls or Churls, and Serfs, and they have 
been perpetuated in the English Constitution and lan- 
guage, as lords and commons and mere laborers, under 
various names. The ealdormen were nobles by birth, 
and generally the leaders in war. Their functions are 
supposed to have resembled those performed by the 
officer named by the Romans of the later Empire Bixx, 
In addition to these officers, there was one above all, 
named King, whose title seems to have depended partly 
upon the popular belief of his descent from Odin and 
partly upon his election by the tribe. He was not neces- 
sarily a leader in war, and his person, being invested 
with a certain sort of reverence due to his divine 
lineage, was regarded as inviolable. This inviolability 
of the monarch is a provision of the English Constitution 
which has characterized it in all history. Legally " the 



204 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

king could do no wrong ;'^ and therefore his advisers, 
and not himself, were responsible for the acts of govern- 
ment. I say legally, by which I mean that under ordi- 
nary circumstances he was irresponsible, according to the 
fundamental Teutonic conception of monarchy; but there 
never was a period in English history in which the right 
to depose a king for cause was not asserted and main- 
tained by the body claiming to represent at the time the 
people in the last resort, whether that body was called 
AVitan, or Parliament, or Convention, — whether the 
alleged offence was, as the early English would have 
said, incompetency, or, as the men of 1688 proclaimed, 
because the king had broken by his acts the original 
contract between himself and his people. Six times in 
the last nine hundred years has the Great Council of the 
nation made use of this power of deposition. 

Of the greater nobles there soon grew to be two classes, 
whom it is necessary to distinguish. The Ealdormen 
were nobles by birth and hereditary descent ; the Thanes, 
as the other class was called, were men of gentle birth, 
who attached themselves to the service of the king as 
warriors, — conwiencled themselves, as the expression was, 
— and, having distinguished themselves in war, were re- 
warded by the kings generally with grants of land, which 
gradually became so numerous that this class became 
a distinct order, called Knights, whose estates were held 
upon condition of rendering military service for these 
lands. Out of this arrangement gradually grew the 
feudal system, the relation of lord and vassal having, 



ANGLO-SAXON ORGANIZATION. 205 

after the Norman conquest, universally replaced both that 
of military patronage and that of those whose position 
depended upon their birth. The witenagemot, or assem- 
bly of the wise and noble, decided in England, as it had 
done in Germany, all questions of importance to the 
tribes composing the nation. The shiregemot, or assembly 
of the shire or county, was rather a judicial tribunal or 
court than a deliberative body. It met several times a 
year, administering justice in accordance with the laws, 
and punishing crime committed Avithin its limits. It 
was probably the most powerful instrument of local self- 
government of those days, and as such it, or something 
resembling it, has been preserved in the political organi- 
zation of all English-speak'ing peoples. 

Trial by jury, as we know it now, was not one of the 
early English institutions, although it has been asserted 
that provision was made for it in the laws of King 
Alfred. The mode of settling disputed questions of 
fact was at first by means of compurgators ; that is, in 
cases of doubt a certain number of a man's neighbors 
were permitted to declare that they believed his state- 
ment of his case to be correct, and this was held to 
be conclusive. While this shows the value attached to 
personal character by the early English law, the system 
of frank-pledge, by which the community in which a 
man lived became responsible for his wrong-doings, is 
an illustration of that solidarite of interests between the 
individual and the society of which he was a member 

which our modern enthusiastic reformers have vainly 

18 



206 MEDLEVAL HISTORY. 

Striven to realize. Like all Teutonic tribes, they seem 
to have had little conception of crime as a moral offence, 
— a feeling which prevailed after they embraced Chris- 
tianity, because it was supposed that the Church should 
take exclusive cognizance of the moral aspect of the 
case, — and all offences, save those of the gravest kind, 
were compounded for by the payment of a sum to the 
sufferer or his relatives, graded according to the rank of 
the offender or of his victim. 

The Saxon conquerors no doubt distributed among 
themselves, first, the enclosed and cultivable land of the 
country, having, of course, confiscated any title of its 
previous holders. These lands were all charged with the 
burden of the trinoda necessitas, a triple obligation or 
tax to the State, consisting of money enough to con- 
struct the roads, to build fortresses, and to provide for 
the military defence. Feudal tenures, at least in the 
strictest sense, were not vet : there were lands belon2;incj; 
to the State and called ager publlcus, or folkland^ held in 
reserve for future public uses, which might be leased by 
the king, or conferred as rewards for services, but which 
could not be absolutely alienated without the consent of 
the witan. 

Such are a few of the more striking characteristics of 
the constitution of the early English political organiza- 
tion; and, considering that the chief occupation of the 
tribes was war with each other and with their Danish 
invaders for nearly five hundred years, and the prevail- 
ing habits of lawless violence engendered by these Avars, 



FUSION OF RACES IN ENGLAND. 207 

it shows the toughness of the fibre of the race, and its 
historical instincts, if I may so express myself, that 
their civil laws should have remained throuo:h all 
chances and changes the basis of modern English juris- 
prudence, just as the Anglo-Saxon tongue has been the 
enduring foundation of our modern English language. 
This has been due in a great measure to the process of 
the fusion of races which has been going on during the 
whole course of English history, and which has re- 
sulted, often after a struggle of centuries, but always 
in the end, in the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon ele- 
ment. A few words about two of the earliest of these 
fusions, which helj^ed to bring the whole territory of 
England under one rule. 

The first of these attempts to establish a common 
English family was by the fusion of the Saxons with 
the Angles, who had been neighboring tribes in Ger- 
many. In England the first occupied the southern and 
Avestern portions, the other the northern and eastern 
portions, of the country. While they were both Teu- 
tonic tribes, each spoke a dialect unknown to the other, 
and there was a slightly different organization in their 
society. The northern province at least was Christian, 
while the population of the Saxon kingdoms was Pa- 
gan, and they were both alike fierce, warlike, and am- 
bitious. After many wars, the details of which, as 
Milton says, would interest us as much as the "stories 
of the battles of the kites and crowds," the overlordship 
of the seven kingdoms, forming what used to be called 



208 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

the SaxoD Heptarchy, fell first to Mercia, the Midland 
kingdom, and after the death of Offa, the king of that 
country, Mercia was assailed by Egbert, the King of the 
West Saxons, and completely subdued by him. This 
was in the year 827 ; a few years after, Egbert invaded 
Northumbria, or the district north of the Humber, and 
reduced that country also to his obedience, so that the 
result was that he ceased in 828 to be merely King of 
Wessex, and became thenceforth nominal ruler of the 
whole English territory, from the Channel to the Firth 
of Forth. He then assumed the title of King of the 
English, the rulers of the kingdoms composing it ac- 
knowledging him as overlord. 

This is an important epoch in the history of the coun- 
try, for it marks the period when it came, for the first 
time since the retirement of the Romans, even nominally, 
under the sway of one ruler. No sooner had this result 
been achieved, and the population of the country had 
become, in name at least, English, than they were called 
upon to resist the most formidable invasion by which 
they had yet been attacked. These new invaders came 
not merely to make raids and to plunder, but to occupy 
permanently the country. They were of that same in- 
domitable race of Northmen whom we recognize as the 
race d^elite of the Middle Age, whom we find moving 
in triumph through all parts of Europe, conquering all 
the various races with whom they came in contact, as 
if to teach us what skill and valor and enterprise may 
do in the work of this world. Those who invaded 



DANISH INVASION. 209 

England were among the fiercest and most cruel of 
their race, and they were urged on by a thirst of re- 
venge for the wrongs which they alleged the Saxons 
had done them, as well as by the ordinary motive for 
such incursions, — the love of plunder. Having occupied 
Northumbria, and mastered the Anglian parts (the east- 
ern and middle) of England, they marched towards the 
Saxons of AVessex, whose king at that time was the 
celebrated Alfred the Great. For seven years the war 
continued Avithout any decisive results, Alfred being 
often reduced to the greatest straits to preserve his own 
life, while the enemy overran his country. At last a 
battle was fought, resulting in such a victory of the 
Saxons that a treaty (that of Wed more) was concluded 
between King Alfred and the Danes in 878, by which 
the territory of England was divided between them, 
the line of demarcation being roughly the old Roman 
Watling Street, extending, as I have said, in a north- 
westerly direction, from London to Chester. The most 
important result of this treaty was that the Danish chiefs 
consented to embrace Christianity, doubtless yielding 
after the manner of the victims of the conversions of 
Charlemagne on the Elbe. The treaty gave, however, 
a certain period of quiet to that part of the country 
ruled by Alfred, and it was during this period that 
this great king proved himself as remarkable for his 
political capacity as he had previously shown himself 
illustrious as a warrior. 

The reign of Alfred is too large a subject to dwell 
18* 



210 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

upon here. It has been the habit to ascribe in times 
2:one bv all that was g^ood in Eno-lancl in the Saxon era 
to the influence of the laws of Alfred. Later investiga- 
tions hardly confirm this view. The king, like many 
other great men, seems to have been a good deal of a 
theorist : his code appears hardly opportune or suited to 
the needs of the rough, hard times of that age. He was 
a philosopher rather than a statesman ; although one of 
his schemes — that of the creation of a navy as the proper 
means of defending an island like England from foreign 
invasion — was one of the most far-sighted and practical 
ever adopted by an English law-giver. The fusion of 
English and Dane was very far from completed. Under 
the successors of Alfred, Danes and ]^orthmen from 
France were the rulers of the country for many genera- 
tions afterwards. But beneath this outward rule the 
leaven of the English spirit was never wanting to leaven 
the whole mass with the characteristic English traits, 
and the very struggles which it was forced to make to 
assert itself gave precision to its aims and served to 
broaden the basis of the English nationality. During 
the rule of the Danes and of the early Norman kings, 
when the native English seemed, to outward appearance, 
wholly conquered, they were really, as subsequent historj 
proves, always gaining strength, and making ready to 
assert their claim to a share in the government of their 
conquerors, until at last they became strong enough to 
make their own characteristic life predominant in its 
policy and administration and permanent in its influence. 



CHRISTIANITY IN ENGLAND. 211 

But I liave said nothing yet of the most potent 
agency of the fusion of the different races inhabiting 
England previous to the Norman conquest: I mean the 
organization of the Christian Church. This, more than 
anything else, in the end, made Britons and Anglo- 
Saxons, Danes and !N'ormans, one people, in religion, 
at least, and brought them under the same form of 
government, into those relations with the rest of Chris- 
tendom which made England part of the great Chris- 
tian commonwealth and enabled her to take a prominent 
place in the general movement of European progress. 
How far Christianity was introduced into England in 
the time of the Celtic Britons, or of their successors the 
Romans, is a disputed question. If it prevailed at all 
previous to the Anglo-Saxon invasion of the country, it 
Avas certainly rooted out by them; for the invaders — 
Anglo-Saxons — were fierce Pagans. Some time during 
the Anglo-Saxon occupation of England Christianity 
made great progress in Ireland, which was, owing to its 
geographical position, the refuge of scholars in those 
days. Many saints flourished there, and many famous 
monasteries, schools, and churches were established. One 
of the Irish monks, Columba, crossed to Scotland with 
the object of converting the Picts, and on the western 
coast, in the island of lona, founded a celebrated monas- 
tery, which became a sort of mother-house for mission- 
aries who preached the faith as far as Northumbria, in 
England. In this kingdom they had great success in 
converting its king, Oswald, and they established their 



212 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

headquarters at a monastery on an island near Whitby 
called Lindisfarne, the Holy Isle. These monks fol- 
lowed the rule of Columba and of lona, and not that 
of the Church of Rome. Meantime, Pope Gregory the 
Great, a.d. 597, had sent his famous mission under Au- 
gustine and his monks to convert the Saxon kingdoms of 
the south of England to Christianity, and to endeavor 
to bring not only them, but those in the north also who 
had been converted by the Irish monks, to the Roman 
obedience, by establishing if possible in England the 
Roman Church organization. The mission was a most 
difficult and delicate one, and it was long before its 
object was gained. The Pope had appointed as the 
Archbishop of York, Wil frith, who was unceasing in 
his efforts to bring the Christians of North umbria and 
those of the south of England under a common rule. 
These efforts continued for more than sixty years, and 
their success was retarded by wars between the two sec- 
tions, and by a common heathen enemy, Penda, King of 
Mercia ; but at last the Synod of Whitby was held in 
664, where the nominal question of discussion between 
the two Churches was as to the proper time of cele- 
brating Easter, but where the real issue was a far more 
important matter, — the importance of which it is, indeed, 
not easy to exaggerate, — whether the Pope or the monks 
from lona should have the supreme rule in the Church 
of England. It was settled in that synod that Christ 
had given the power of the keys to Peter, and not to 
Columba. The king thereupon determined to submit 



THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND BECOMES ROMAN. 213 



to the Pope, and not to the successors of tlie Abbot of 
lona. 

This most momentous decision was soon followed 
by the appointment of a Greek monk, Tlieodore of 
Tarsus, to be Archbishop of Canterbury, who divided 
the country into dioceses, witli bishops subordinate to 
him. I call this decision momentous, not merely be- 
cause in a time of wild lawlessness it settled that the 
religion of England should have the same form and 
organization of Christianity, but also because it adopted 
that form which had then become common to the rest of 
AYestern Europe and of which the Pope was the head. 
Such an organization, as I have said, proved, in the 
hands of the able men who were successively put in 
charge of it, not only the most potent agency for civil- 
izing the nation, but, as a means to that end, for fnsino- 
into unity its discordant elements. In the Anglo- 
Saxon Church the bishops and the abbots of the great 
monasteries, which had been originally missionary foun- 
dations, were the centres of the church government. 
The bishop was named by the king and the iDitan. He 
ranked, as we should say now, as a peer of the realm, 
with a seat in the Great Council. The administration 
of the Church, both as to its revenues and as to its dis- 
cipline, was in the hands of these bishops and abbots, 
assembled in synods. The bishops were personages of 
great importance, and were often called upon to take 
^ a direct part in the administration of the secular affairs 
of the kingdom. Their dioceses were large and their 



214 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

revenues immense, and the difference between them and 
the ordinary mass priests, who ranked with the churls 
and shared their social degradation, was very great. 
The real power was in their hands and in those of the 
canons and the abbots of the monasteries. 

Under the peculiar jurisprudence of the Anglo-Saxons, 
the whole of what may be called the correctional police 
of the country was in the hands of the clergy. The State 
might inflict fines or take away life, but only the bishop 
or the priest could enforce penance or seclude the crimi- 
nal from the world. The practical value of this Church 
discipline in humanizing and civilizing the wild Saxon 
tribes cannot be overrated. They seem, indeed, to have 
had no other conception of the moral wrong of certain 
crimes than that they were breaches of the discipline of 
the Church. To them murder and theft, and keeping 
Easter on the wrong day, were similar offences, because 
they equally violated the rule of Holy Church. So 
Avith fasts, which in those days of coarse gluttony were 
essential to the health of the body, not to say of the 
soul. It would have been quite idle to preach absti- 
nence on such grounds as these, or even on the hio:her 
ground that fasting was a duty enjoined by Christ : so 
that its observance was made dependent upon an order 
or rule of the Church, which could be enforced by pen- 
ance. The clergy were the real rulers in the modern 
sense: in other words, they governed on some other 
principle than that of force, although force was never 
wanting to secure obedience to their discipline when 



n CASTA N OF CANTERBURY. 215 



necessary. Hence they became naturally rich and pow- 
erful, and it is not surprising that we find the whole 
current of progress directed by them. 

The representative man of the Anglo-Saxon Church, 
who first brouglit the ecclesiastical power into the ser- 
vice of the State, striving as a religious reformer to miti- 
gate the abuses of the rude government of the times, was 
the celebrated Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury. He 
was born in 923, and is said to have been the trusted 
servant of one king, Edred, to have deprived a second, 
Edwy, of half of his dominions, to have established a 
third, Edgar, on the throne, and to have directed tlie 
policy of that sovereign and his successor, Ethelred. 
He is cliiefly known in history as the great advocate for 
enforcing the celibacy of tlie clergy, and especially of 
the monks, who are said to have made the houses which 
were originally established as mission-stations homes for 
large families, and to have diverted the money which 
had been given to the Church for the relief of the suf- 
fering, to support them in luxurious and unbecoming 
living. There are two sides to this controversy, upon 
which I do not propose to enter now, but its chief inter- 
est to us is this, that Dunstan succeeded through the use 
of the power of the State in firmly establishing a rule 
of ecclesiastical discipline wholly at variance with the 
preceding practice. Of course he could not have done 
so had he merely exercised the ordinary power of a 
priest, great as it was in that age. But he was, like 
Cardinal Richelieu, a statesman as well as an ecclesiastic; 



216 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

biitj unlike the cardinal, his statesmanship was always 
controlled by the paramount consideration of advancing 
the Church by any policy he adopted. 

Whatever may have been his merits or demerits, the 
era of peace and prosperity in England ceased for a long 
time after his death. The Danes soon came again to 
England, not to plunder this time, but to conquer and 
to remain, striving to make the country a member of a 
great Scandinavian confederacy. This proved a dream ; 
but it is' a sad truth that, beginning from the reign of 
Canute, the kings of England for two hundred years, 
with the exception of the Confessor, were foreigners, — 
Danes, Normans, and Angevins, — and to many it seemed 
that the England of Egbert and Alfred was dead and 
buried with the laws of Edward the Confessor. 



CHAPTER yill. 

ENGLAND AFTER THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 

In treating of English history after the Norman con- 
quest the field before us is so wide, and the era is so 
marked by events of permanent interest, that I am some- 
what embarrassed in the choice of topics for discussion. 
I can select only those which seem of conspicuous im- 
portance, and which are generally recognized as forming 
landmarks in English liistory, my purpose being chiefly 
to direct attention to the subjects which ought to be 
studied, and to suggest in what way and with reference 
to what historical relations they should be investigated. 

For the sake of method, I shall discuss the great events 
in English history after the Norman conquest, as they 
appear to have affected the national life and growth, 
in four distinct ways : 1, as they illustrate the develop- 
ment of the .political constitution of the country in the 
direction of freedom and self-government ; 2, as affect- 
ing the relations of Church and State in that country 
during the Middle Age ; 3, as showing the general de- 
velopment of the social life of that period ; and, 4, as 
controlling the foreign and external policy of England 
under the Norman and Angevin or Plantagenet kings. 

The Norman conquest was not probably intended by 

William in the beginning to produce so radical a change 

19 217 



218 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

in the relations of the governors and governed as he 
afterwards found necessary to make in order to consoli- 
date his dominion. He claimed that he had a true title 
to the crown independent of any military conquest of 
the country, for he had been designated by Edward the 
Confessor as his successor, he had been recognized after 
the battle of Hastings by the wiian as king, and had 
been duly crowned as such by the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury. But these claims were not regarded as valid by a 
very large portion of the population of the northern and 
western portions of England : they broke out in a fierce 
revolt against his authority, which he maintained with 
overpowering force and cruelty. It was this revolt, 
probably, which settled the Conqueror's method of gov- 
erning the country, and laid the foundation of a system 
which, changed as it has become by the necessities of the 
time through a succession of ages, still retains unmis- 
takable marks of its Norman and feudal origin. 

The possession of land was, as will be understood, the 
essential mark and guarantee of power during the Middle 
Age throughout Europe. The first step in William's re- 
organization of the country was the transfer of the land 
from the Saxon nobles to his Norman followers. In 
doing this, he adopted, with certain modifications, the 
feudal principle which then prevailed universally in the 
Teutonic conquests in Europe. But he seems to have 
been fully impressed with the defects in the feudal tenures 
as they had been developed on the Continent, in France 
especially, where the great vassals with large fiefs had 



THE FIEFS COAFERREDBY THE CONQUEROR. 219 

made themselves practically independent of the crown, 
reducing the king, as I have elsewhere shown, to the 
position of a merely nominal ruler in his own dominions. 
The Conqueror, therefore, in conferring fiefs in England, 
provided not merely that the donees — his tenants in caplte, 
as they were called — should swear allegiance, yield 
military service to him, and hold their estates of him 
personally, as was the case elsewhere, but also that all 
the sub-tenants of these great feudatories should come 
under similar obligations to the king, as paramount lord 
to their own chiefs; and this was made an essential con- 
dition of the tenure of their estates by his followers. 
Not only this, but, with the view of still further lessening 
that power of the great nobles which had been employed 
on the Continent to embarrass and weaken the king's 
authority, he conferred on the same person fiefs and 
manors in widely distant parts of the country, so as to 
avoid the creation of duchies or lordships embracing a 
large adjacent territory held by the same person or 
family. In order more fully to render himself absolute 
master, he maintained the old Saxon plan of a])pointing 
sheriffs and of organizing courts for each county, thus 
reducing the local power and influence of the great land- 
owners to harmless proportions. His object was further 
accomplished by abolishing the Saxon division of the 
country into great provinces with a great noble at the 
head of each. He substituted therefor the smaller di- 
vision of counties. 

No one in history seems to have understood more 



220 MEDL^VAL HISTORY. 

clearly the advantages and disadvantages of the feudal 
system than William the Conqueror. His object was to 
rule absolutely, and yet to make his followers, who had 
aided him In acquiring the country, satisfied, — to restrain 
every form of rapine and plunder except his own, and 
to maintain In his pay and under his control a force 
sufficiently large and powerful to keep his own com- 
panions and friends from undue violence. He did all 
this with extraordinary sagacity and with such materials 
as he had at hand, and he succeeded as no one on the 
Continent since Charlemagne had done. In no ruler was 
the Norman Instinct of order, organization, and discipline 
so conspicuous. He completed his system by causing an 
accurate survey and census of the Inhabitants and their 
possessions to be taken. These were compiled In the 
celebrated Domesday-Book, so that he and his successors 
were able to ascertain fully the resources at any time at 
their disposal. His rule was essentially military, harsh, 
and cruel, as was necessary to govern the rough ad- 
venturers who had followed him, and the half-subdued 
natives, but It at least secured the first element of all 
good government, — viz., public order. 

His sons, especially Henry Beauclerc, had the same 
Norman Instincts. Under him the Great Council of the 
Kealm, composed of the greater nobles and prelates, was 
divided Into several committees or courts, each with a 
distinct function, — one to revise and register the laws, 
one to assess and collect the revenue, another forming a 
court of appeal ; and In a certain measure this form of 



RULE OF THE NORMAN KINGS. 221 

organization continues in England at the present day. 
The great object of the Norman and the Angevin kings 
seems to have been to depress the power of the baronage 
while making use of their military power. With this 
object in view, they granted important privileges to the 
towns on the royal demesne or king's private estates, a 
concession which removed them entirely from the juris- 
diction of the feudal courts. Nothing is more striking 
as an illustration of how far the power of the nobles 
was curtailed in comparison with that of the same class 
on the Continent at the same time, than that Stephen, 
legally, of course, a usurper, reigned as king simply 
because he Avas supported by the city of London, and 
that the negotiation by which the crown was to go on 
his death to Henry's grandson was successfully carried 
out by the Archbishop of Canterbury and was not the 
work of the baronage. 

Henry II. continued the task of reducing the feudal 
importance of the barons, and while, unquestionably, 
by so doing he increased the royal power, he also, per- 
haps unwittingly, improved the condition and confirmed 
the political rights of the hoiirgeoisie. He commuted the 
knights' personal service into scutage, a tax payable in 
money; and this enabled him to dispense with the mili- 
tary aid of the barons and their feudal retainers when- 
ever he thought proper to do so. He could either hire, 
with the money produced by it, mercenary troojis, or 
call out a general levy of the population and arm them. 

To him, and not to King Alfred, belongs the honor of 

19* 



222 MED LEV AL HISTORY. 

having established the trial by grand jury and petit jury 
in criminal cases as it is now known and practised by 
all English-speaking nations. Moreover, he established, 
on a basis which has never been shaken, a system of 
courts in which the same uniform law of the land was 
administered to every subject of the crown by judges ap- 
pointed by the king, who made circuits of the country 
for that purpose. This, as may be remembered, was in 
striking contrast to the system prevailing in France and 
Germany at the same period and until long after, where 
each grand vassal within his own fief was sovereign not 
only in the enactment of the law but in its administra- 
tion also. He was both law-giver and judge. 

Of Henry II.'s two sons, Richard Coeur de Lion and 
John, the latter was the more reckless and cruel. The 
former was a Crusader, the chief of Crusaders, and his 
career and that of his great ally in the Holy Wars, Philip 
Augustus, may be studied with advantage by those w^ho 
wish to know how far the moral enthusiasm which led 
the higher princes of Europe to embark in these expe- 
ditions was deep and real. John was a perfidious traitor 
from the beginning, — false to his father, to his brother, 
and to his nephew, Arthur, the son of his elder brother 
Geoffrey. In certain of the Norman possessions of the 
Kings of England, Arthur was recognized as the true 
heir; but John, assailing the army which maintained 
his nephew's pretensions in France, defeated it, cap- 
tured the prince, and was accused among his contem- 
poraries of having assassinated him. The result was 



EMBARRASSMENTS OF KING JOHN. 223 



the forfeiture of his fief to the French king, tlie capture 
of Normandy and of all the other English possessions 
in France ; and at that time they exceeded in territorial 
extent that portion of modern France then held by its 
nominal king. But John, with all the bad qualities of 
his race, had its courage and its tenacious spirit, and he 
called upon the barons and prelates of his kingdom for 
aid to enable him to regain his Continental possessions. 
They declined, on the ground that the tenures by which 
they held their estates did not compel them to serve the 
king outside the realm. 

While thus struggling, he met with a new embarrass- 
ment, in the appointment of an Archbishop of Canter- 
bury by Pope Innocent III., in violation of what he 
claimed to be the clear rights of his crown. On his 
refusing to recognize the new archbishop, one Church 
censure after another was inflicted upon him, until 
finally he was excommunicated by the Pope. In those 
days such a sentence had a terrible significance and 
power, esj^ecially in the case of an unpopular king. By 
it his kingdom was placed under an interdict, his sub- 
jects were released from allegiance to him, he was thus 
cut off even from the aid of his allies, and therefore 
rendered utterly powerless as a sovereign. John's po- 
sition became perfectly desperate under such a ban. 
He was forced to bear, in addition to it, the odium of the 
loss of the English possessions in France, and the hatred 
and distrust of his own nobles, not only as a man but as 
an excommunicate king. In this position he decided 



224 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

that the best, perhaps the only, course he could take 
was submission to the Pope, an act which included not 
merely the recognition of the archbishop who had been 
appointed, but an actual conveyance of his kingdom to 
the Pope, to be held afterwards by him and his succes- 
sors, Kings of England, as a fief of the Holy See, the 
Pope thus becoming the overlord, and he, in due form, 
his liege-man. This extraordinary and desperate act 
seems to have led the nobles to look upon the king, who 
could thus barter away the crown of England, with even 
greater horror than they had felt when he was under the 
ban of excommunication or accused of the assassination 
of Prince Arthur. The result was a determination on 
their part to extort from their helpless sovereign a con- 
firmation and guarantee of their claims to certain funda- 
mental rights. The king was in no condition to oppose 
any claims they might make, so that delegates from his 
friends and from the nobles who were encamped in battle- 
array near by, in the meadows of Kunnymede, met and 
settled in one day — July 15, 1215 — the provisions of that 
celebrated treaty known in English history as Magna 
Charta, the Great Charter. Many of its provisions refer 
only to the feudal relations of the king with the barons, 
but others are found there of a more general applica- 
tion, probably through the influence of the Archbishop, 
Stephen Langton, the very man whose forced nomina- 
tion by the Pope had been the immediate cause of the 
rebellion of the barons, but who proved himself on this 
occasion the most strenuous asserter of the constitutional 



MAGNA CHARTA. 225 

rights of all Englishmen. The provisions concerning 
the rights of the people in Magna Charta have made 
it the most memorable declaration of the principles of 
English liberty in its history. Magna Charta affirms, 
it is said, nothing new of the rights of Englishmen : it 
merely confirms the most important of them in the most 
solemn manner. Its fundamental propositions concern- 
ing government are two, and they have always been re- 
tained in England, and have been incorporated since in 
the codes of all English-speaking people. 1. As to per- 
sonal liberty and the security of private property. "No 
freeman shall be seized, imprisoned, or dispossessed, save 
by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land." 
2. As to taxation. "No scutage or aid shall be imposed 
in our realm save by the Common CounciP' (i.e., Par- 
liament) "of the realm." Magna Charta was not only 
a great charter, but has proved a common charter for 
all classes of the English people for all time. Many 
attempts were made by the Plantagenet kings to evade 
its provisions. Henry III., in his confirmation of 
Magna Charta, omitted the prohibition contained in it 
in regard to levying scutages, but he did not exact 
them. It was declared no less than thirty-eight times in 
eighty years the fundamental law of the kingdom, and 
Edward I. (1297), according to Hallam, ratified so fully 
its provisions as " to give the same security to private 
property as had been given to personal liberty." 

The next most important development of politi- 
cal life in England was the provision for some proper 



220 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

representation in Parliament of the lesser baronage 
(who may be considered the representatives of the Anglo- 
Saxon thanes) and of the burgesses of the towns. It 
was found that the excellent provisions of Magna 
Charta could not all be carried into practical effect, 
because the king and the great barons, acting through 
the Great Council, were not favorably disposed towards 
the execution of some of the most important of them. 
Henry III., son of John, was a vainglorious prince, 
whose favorites were chiefly foreigners, and these soon 
monopolized the most important and lucrative positions 
both in Church and State. They were guilty of all 
manner of illegal exactions, if Magna Charta was to 
be regarded as the standard of the law. The charter, 
since it was granted, had been confirmed by frequent 
oaths, but its provisions were in practice often dis- 
regarded, and the resentment of the barons expressed 
itself in a determined protest against these violations 
of the law, and in a refusal of further subsidies. The 
remedy was felt to lie in providing some sort of repre- 
sentation of the commonalty in the government of the 
kingdom. It was first proposed that the commons, the 
lesser baronage, and the freeholders should elect " twelve 
honest men'^ who should come to the Parliament when 
the king and the council sent for them to treat of the 
wants of the king and his kingdom. It is to be noted 
that the proclamation which ordered the observance of 
tliese and the like provisions adopted at Oxford was 
the first royal proclamation ever issued in the English 



SIMON DE MONTFORT. 227 



language, which is very significant as showing to which 
race the power of the State was then passing. 

These measures caused great irritation among the 
higher nobles and ih^ royal foreign favorites. They 
were set aside by Louis, King of France, to whose 
arbitrament they had been, strange to say, submitted. 
There was nothing left to the leader of the reform 
movement, Simon de Montfort, but an appeal against 
the king by arms. He was speedily deserted by the 
barons who had urged him on; but, strong in the sup- 
port of the towns, he led an army against the king, 
in which were arrayed fifteen thousand Londoners. He 
gained the great victory of Lewes in 1264, and was 
placed at the head of the State. True to his convictions 
that the remedy for the evils which afflicted the kincr- 
dom was to be found in a representation of the towns, 
he summoned a Parliament to which every borough Avas 
invited to send two representatives. In the previous 
reign, and even in that of Henry, two knights of the 
shire had been summoned by the king to Parliament as 
representatives of the lesser baronage ; but it was Simon 
de Montfort, the foreigner, the son of the detested 
leader of the crusade against the Albigenses, who first 
invited the merchant and the trader to sit beside the 
knight of the shire, the baron, and the bishop in the 
Parliament of the realm. He may well be called the 
founder of the English House of Commons. The or- 
ganization which he framed continues, at least in form 
and name, to the present day, although in the reign 



228 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

of Henry VI. the burgesses and the freeholders in 
the counties, who had all previously had the right to 
vote for members of Parliament, were debarred from 
that privilege unless they possessed a yearly revenue of 
forty shillings _per annum. Tliis latter provision elimi- 
nated the popular element which it was designed origi- 
nally to introduce into Parliament, and has made the 
House of Commons ever since the representative of the 
property classes in the kingdom, both in trade and land, 
and, therefore, steady and conservative in its tone and 
indisposed to sudden radical changes by yielding to the 
popular feeling of the day. 

The relations of the religious belief of the English 
people to their duties as subjects of the king — in other 
words, the growth, after the Conquest, of the strange 
dualism of Church and State — gave rise to some of the 
most memorable events in English history ; and it is im- 
possible to understand English life or English character 
without some study of this subject. It presents itself 
during the mediaeval age as a constant struggle turn- 
ing upon a question of divided allegiance. It was not 
merely a question whether, in a given case, obedience 
was due to the Church or the State, both claiming to 
be supreme powers within the realm ; but also whether, 
in case of a collision of these powers, the supreme ar- 
biter should be the king and the laws of the nation, or 
the Pope. Bitter disputes and much bloodshed grew 
out of honest differences of opinion on these subjects. 

The Norman conquest made, of course, changes in 



THE CONQUEROR AND THE CHURCH. 229 

the details of the government of the Church in Eng- 
land. The Saxon bishops were dispossessed, one by one, 
in consequence of alleged delinquencies, and Norman 
prelates, generally of high character and great learn- 
ing, were substituted for them. Lanfranc, a man of 
the greatest reputation for ability, abbot of the famous 
monastery of Bee, in Normandy, was made Archbishop 
of Canterbury. He gave a third of his revenue to the 
poor, worked hard on a revised text of the Scriptures, 
and shocked the prejudices of the vulgar by expur- 
gating from the English calendar names of saints dear 
to the natives, but not accredited on the Continent. The 
new dignitaries in the Church, as well as in the State, 
were, of course, all Normans, and the differences of lan- 
guage and of race removed them necessarily far from 
their flocks. The Conqueror w^as disposed to curtail 
that practice of the interference by the clergy with civil 
affairs, with which the Anglo-Saxon system had been 
thoroughly interpenetrated, but he desired to be on good 
terms with the Pope, who had blessed his expedition. 
When that Pope, however, who was no other than the 
celebrated Hildebrand, Gregory YII., intimated that 
fealty — that is, homage made sacred by an oath — was 
due to him from the king for his crown, he was roughly 
answered that he would submit to nothing of the kind, 
as his predecessors had refused to recognize any such 
claim. The Pope, who found that he had quite a dif- 
ferent prince to deal with from the abject penitent 

Henry IV. at Canossa, allowed the matter to drop. 

20 



230 MEDLEVAL HISTORY. 

In William's policy towards the Church we see the 
germ of that State supremacy asserted four centuries 
later by Henry VIII. He took upon himself to decide 
which of two rival Popes his clergy should recognize. 
He insisted that they should not, in council, adopt any 
canons which the king had not recommended or ap- 
proved ; and he prohibited the excommunication of any 
one of his chief tenants, no matter what might have 
been his crime, unless the censure was inflicted by the 
special permission of the king. When we remember 
how absolute had been the control of the Church pre- 
viously over the wills, the consciences, and the habits 
of men, we can form some conception of the effect pro- 
duced by these innovations. But the influence and 
power of the clergy were not to be thus overthrown. 
From the beginning, the Norman kings tried to draw 
the line between the citizen and the priest, to bring 
England into connection with the rest of Europe and the 
Roman law by a reasonable submission to the Roman 
See, and yet keep her free from foreign control in her 
policy, both in the Church and State. Notwithstanding 
this constant uniform policy, the clergy lost no oppor- 
tunity of asserting claims which we should deem very 
extravagant had they not been recognized as valid by 
the sovereigns of many of the other countries of Europe 
during the mediaeval era. Thus, Ansel m, the mildest 
and meekest of monks before he became the successor 
of his old teacher, Lanfranc, as Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, tried to renew in England the old quarrel of the 



POLICY OF THE CHURCH. 231 

Investitures, which had been the source of so much 
humiliation in Germany, involving the claim of the 
sovereign to invest the bishops with the episcopal office, 
as well as with the estates annexed to it, by the symbol- 
ical delivery of the ring and crosier. Then, again, we 
find Thomas Becket persisting in his denial of the juris- 
diction of the civil courts over ecclesiastical persons, 
until his obstinacy caused his assassination. And so in 
the next reign we find King John forced to submit to 
the Pope, who had excommunicated him, and, as a 
proof of his sincerity, agreeing, as we have said, to hold 
his kingdom as a fief of the Holy See, because he found 
that discontented barons could defy without danger an 
excommunicated king. On the other hand, we find the 
Archbishop, Theobald, saving the country from a bloody 
war of succession by exerting a power which was strong 
enough to induce the most powerful of the nobles to 
consent to the succession of Stephen ; and the most 
prominent and noblest figure, as I have said, among 
those who extorted Magna Charta from King John 
was that very Archbishop Langton whose appointment 
by the Pope had begun the troubles of the reign. 

The great bishops of the Middle Age in England, 
especially under the Norman kings, were statesmen 
rather than Churchmen, as we now apply that term ; 
but we must remember always that their statesmanship 
controlled through the machinery of the Church a vast 
variety of influences which now reach society by other 
channels. The ordinary parish priest, or mass priest 



232 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

as he was called, held a very inferior position ; he was 
often a man of very loose character and set a bad ex- 
ample. There were many foreigners who held prefer- 
ment in the Church who never lived in England, and 
who were specially hated by the people because they were 
non-residents. Large sums of money were annually 
sent to Rome as Church dues, — another subject of con- 
stant complaint. The canons and the monks formed the 
most respectable and influential portion of the clerical 
body. They would not perhaps, at the present day, 
be regarded as model Churchmen. Many of them had 
grown rich, and therefore lazy ; yet it cannot be denied 
that they did much good in their day. Not to speak 
more highly than one ought to do of the value of indis- 
criminate almsgiving by the monasteries, yet it had in 
those days its obvious uses. There can be no doubt, 
either, that monks were improving landlords, and con- 
cerned themselves with cattle and crops, and with 
maintaining large reserve granaries of food against 
the frequent famines, at a time when the nobles cared 
more to raise men-at-arms than to give their attention 
to such matters. 

The Church became too, in those days, another name 
for the home of the learned professions. It was open 
to every promising aspirant, and men who afterwards 
became architects, painters, historians, and philosophers 
escaped from the plough or the service of arms by min- 
istering at the altar. The Church and its worship be- 
came dear to the people as part of their daily life ; and 



DOMINICANS AND FRANCISCANS. 233 

yet there was no blindness to its many abuses. Tliere 
was always an extreme jealousy of the interference of for- 
eigners especially, and even of the authority of the Pope 
himself, when he asserted his claims upon its revenues. 
This feeling found expression in two celebrated statutes, 
the one passed in 1351, the Statute of Provisors, which 
forbade the disposal of clerical livings in England by 
the Pope, the other passed in 1353, called the Statute of 
Prcemunire, which prohibited the publication of papal 
bulls in England. The penalties provided for the of- 
fences prohibited by these statutes were very severe. 

The Dominican friars, whose special function was 
public preaching, and the Franciscans, whose business it 
was to care for the poor, — duties which had been much 
neglected by the ordinary priesthood, — seemed peculiarly 
fitted to revive the spiritual deadness of the Church and 
to restore the waning affection of the people. They were 
established in the middle of the thirteenth century, and 
when they began their work in England they were most 
warmly welcomed, by the common people particularly, 
who have always been very earnest in their religious 
convictions, whatever they may have been. These friars 
did a most important work there, especially among the 
inhabitants of the towns. Their poverty, self-denial, 
and devotion to duty kept alive the religious sentiment, 
at the same time that it inspired the people with a bitter 
opposition and hatred to the official clergy, — the well- 
endowed monks and parish priests, — who were conspic- 
uous by contrast for a want of zeal in their work. 

20* 



234 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

This feeling increased as years went on, and prevailed 
indeed long after the mendicant friars had become 
merely impudent beggars and as careless of their proper 
duties as the monks and parish clergy had formerly been. 

There seems to have been a general feeling of discon- 
tent in England during the fourteenth century among 
the commonalty, arising from a variety of causes. Be- 
fore it broke out in a terrible social revolt against the 
misgovernment of the country and the exactions of the 
privileged classes, it showed itself, as is usually the case, 
in murmurings against the abuses of the Church. John 
Wyclif was the leader and representative of this move- 
ment. He was not only the earliest English Protestant 
in the modern sense, but also, from the impulse he gave, 
all the discontent of the time, from whatever source, 
fell into the channel of hostility to the Church. Hence, 
while there was no doubt a common resolve to substitute 
personal religion for a blind obedience to ecclesiastical 
authority, there was a feeling beneath it of hatred to 
the rule of foreign favorites, and a strong desire among 
the discontented to gain greater influence in their own 
government. This was the seed which produced not 
only Lollardy, but Wat Tyler's Rebellion and the 
Peasants' Revolt, thus making Wyclif's attempt at re- 
forming the Church a precursor of changes affecting 
the whole social and political condition of the country. 

The relations of England to her possessions in France 
during the rule of the Norman and Plantagenet kings 
caused always much embarrassment in the government 



ENGLISH POSSESSIONS IN FRANCE. 235 

of the country. Their territorial extent was great, em- 
bracing the larger half of modern France, and they were 
made up of different provinces, each with a distinct gov- 
ernment of its own, and all unlike that of England. 
The king's possessions in France embraced Normandy 
and Maine, the original lands of the Conqueror, Anjou 
and Touraine, the inheritance of the Plantagenets, and 
Aquitaine or Guienne, the province brought to Henry 11. 
as a dowry when he married Eleanor, the divorced wife 
of Louis YII. To these must be added the claim of 
Edward III. to the whole of France as the descendant, 
through his mother, of Philip IV. Every one of these 
claims to territory in France was disputed at different 
times by the rulers of that country, and the English 
kings were forced to defend their title to them during 
nearly four centuries with English bloody and with Eng- 
lish treasure. Their nominal sovereignty over them 
brought little else to the English people save abundant 
harvests of glory reaped upon such fields as Crecy, 
Poitiers, and Azincour. This was a product which per- 
haps, after all, was more valuable in permanent results 
than it would seem at first sight, for out of it grew, in a 
great measure, that consciousness of strength which en- 
abled the English nation, in spite of its kings, to main- 
tain firmly those political institutions which have given 
the race the true mastery of the world. Yet w^hile England 
had possessions in France she lacked true national life ; 
she was in a great measure ruled by foreigners ; she was 
always comparatively weak ; and there can be no doubt 



236 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

that modern England, with its marvellous power, begins 
to date from the close of the hundred-years' war which 
severed her connection with France. While that con- 
nection lasted, the policy of Engkuid was in a great 
measure determined by the unnatural position (if I may 
use such an expression) which she occupied on the Con- 
tinent. Her kings, down at least to the time of Ed- 
ward I., thought they best increased their power by 
acquiring new provinces outside of England, and the 
English policy was determined not so much with a view 
of providing for her own wants and developing her 
resources as for securing these foreign conquests. Per- 
haps anything in that day which weakened the power of 
the Norman and Plantagenet kings indirectly strength- 
ened the true foundations of English liberty. A curious 
illustration of this is found in the effect on the nation of 
the loss of Normandy by King John, and of his other 
military disasters. Had he succeeded in recovering Nor- 
mandy and in defeating the French at Bouvines, he 
would have been too strong for his nobles when they 
sought to extort Magna Charta from him ; but he failed 
in his schemes, and the victories of the French thus 
became, strange to say, one of the most important con- 
ditions for securing the great charter of English liberty. 
In trying to form some picture of Anglo-Norman life 
we must remember that the feudal system was a graded 
hierarchy, in which each person had a place as well ascer- 
tained and settled as that of soldiers in a regiment. The 
common bond of obligation between these grades was 



ANGLO-NORMAN LIFE. 237 

what is technically called service, and the grade or rank 
of each person was determined by the nature of that ser- 
vice. Thus, the distinction between the gentry and the 
mere freeholders lay in the service of arms, and between 
the freeholders and the villeins in this, that the service of 
the first was fixed and invariable, and that of the other 
arbitrary and at the pleasure of the lord. These distinc- 
tions penetrated into the very core of Anglo-Norman 
society, and would have retarded all progress had it not 
been for the establishment of towns and the necessities of 
making changes which grew out of their peculiar life. 
The original town in England seems to have been a space 
of open country in which people gathered together for 
the purpose of trade, for the supply of the camp of some 
Roman legion or the wants of some neighboring abbey or 
castle. These towns alone possessed the money gained by 
trade which the English kings so often needed to subdue 
the turbulent barons or to carry on their foreign wars. 
Those on the royal demesne — that is, those which were 
on the king's private lands — soon gained for their in- 
habitants the right of free speech, of maintaining courts 
within their walls, and of meeting in arms. These 
were rights purchased from the king; and the vassals 
dependent on abbeys and castles soon after secured their 
freedom from feudal services in the same way. 

It must not be supposed that the inhabitants of 
these towns were free in our modern sense. Each of 
the classes composing the citizens Avas bound to the other 
by a system of mutual assurance of each other^s good 



238 MEDL-EVAL HISTORY. 

conduct. This was the development of the system of 
frank-pledge, which in Saxon times, as I have said, 
made each political division of the country responsible 
for the good conduct of all of its inhabitants. Nomi- 
nally, in the towns at least, people were free to talk 
and free to trade, even free to bear arms at certain times ; 
but practically this did not mean what it might do now. 
" Every town and village,'' says a learned historian, 
^' was bail for its inhabitants, as every lord was for his 
vassals. A strange comer in a village, who was neither 
armed, nor rich, nor a clerk, must enter and leave his 
host's house by daylight; and even then he could not 
be harbored more than a night out of his own tithing. 
Twice a year the county court held a visitation to 
ascertain whether any fugitive serfs were within its 
jurisdiction. The best chance for a runaway was to 
take refuge in a town ; the laws would protect his life 
and property; but if he had not the city franchise, 
or was not a member of some guild, his position was 
terribly at the mercy of chance. Fire, sickness, pov- 
erty, might ruin him beyond hope. It was this class, 
accordingly, that were the great social evil of the times, 
the lazars and the lepers, who died like flies in a time 
of pestilence, and as their true representatives and suc- 
cessors, the tramps, do at this day, — the canaille whom 
the knights and burghers trod down pitilessly." This 
is a dark picture of the social condition of the landless 
villeins of the thirteenth century, all the darker when 
we reflect that in those days three out of every five 



THE TOWNS AND THE GILDES. 239 

Englishmen belonged to this class. Many of these 
towns became powerful from the riches derived from 
their trade and manufactures, and in them, in the pur- 
suit of gain, no doubt the distinction between the Nor- 
man and Saxon became lost, the English language and 
the English customary law being the natural outgrowth 
of the English race which was dominant in them. 

The municipal government of these towns, when they 
became free from feudal services, was in the hands of 
the burghers, as tiiey were called, each burgher deriving 
his right to share in the rule from his membership in 
one of the trade-tildes within the town. These 2;ildes 
were composed in the beginning of those engaged in the 
principal trades or manufactures carried on within the 
town, and the increase of their number was jealously 
guarded by the burghers, so that the nuinicipal power 
might remain in the hands of the representatives of a 
few trades. But as the towns prospered, and other forms 
of industry grew up, those concerned in them, dissatis- 
fied with the oligarchical government of the original 
burghers, desired to organize new glides, representing 
new trades or occupations, so that they might share in 
the government of the town. These new glides were 
known as craft-gildes, and the struggle between them 
and those before established, known as merchant gikles, 
was carried on with intense bitterness in many of these 
towns during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The 
result was, in the end, a civic revolution, by which all 
the glides throughout the kingdom, whether merchant 



240 MEDL^VAL HISTORY. 

or crafty gained an equal share in the municipal gov- 
ernment. But this peculiar feature remained in Eng- 
land, as it did on the Continent, for ages, in towns 
that had been made free from feudal servitude, that the 
inhabitants as such who did not belong to the burgher 
class were not represented either in the government of 
the city or in the General Council or Parliament of the 
kingdom. Thus it would appear that, much as the towns 
did for their own emancipation from feudal tyranny, 
the rule of the burgher aristocracy which was substituted 
for it gave no share in the government, either local or 
general, to the mass of the population within them, and 
perpetuated many evils which were almost as intolerable 
as those inflicted by the feudal tyranny. 

The parish or the manor — the administrative unit, as 
it afterwards became — in those days was divided into 
four portions. First, the lord of the fee, with his feudal 
rights over the whole, had a private demesne or farm, 
wliich he cultivated by his bailiff or steward; second, 
there were small estates possessed by the freeholders, who 
paid quit-rents or ground-rents to the lord ; third, there 
were the tenements and lands of the villeins, — bordarii or 
cottarii, as they were called ; and, fourth, the waste or com- 
mon land, relic of the earliest Teutonic organization, upon 
which all the tenants had the right of pasture. The 
lands of the villeins were legally held at services ar- 
bitrarily determined by the lord, but in point of fact 
these services were generally commuted for a money pay- 
ment by the tenant accepted by the lord. These customary 



CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE. 241 

payments in lieu of services added very much to the 
income of the lords, and they would have looked upon 
any project which might deprive them of this portion 
of their revenue with alarm. It is curious to observe 
that such should have been the actual relation of the 
villeins to their lords at the very time when legally they 
were slaves, and bound to render to them all their labor 
w^ithout compensation. It is most important also to 
remember that the social discontent in England which 
broke out in the formidable revolts of Wat Tyler and 
Jack Cade was not due either to scarcity of food or to 
the reduction of the rate of wages. It arose from the 
attempt on the part of these villeins — copyholders as 
they were called (because their names were on the roll 
of the manor), but who were legally slaves — to establish 
their right to a pecuniary commutation of the lord's claim 
to their labor against a threatened invasion of that custom, 
or, in other words, from a fear lest an effort should be 
made to revive the arbitrary control of the lord over 
the laborer and his work, which had })revailed before this 
customary method of commutation had been adopted. 

The i)easant's house was built of the coarsest material, 
most frequently of wattles daubed with mud or clay. 
Bricks appear never to have been used. The manor- 
house was generally built of stone, but the outbuildings 
were of the meanest description. We who are provided 
with the modern conveniences of living can hardly un- 
derstand the privations of a mediaeval winter, the joy 

of a mediseval spring, and the glad thankfulness of an 

21 



242 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

abundant harvest. Cheap artificial light is familiar to 
us, but in the mediaeval era a pound of candles would 
have cost as much as the day's wages of the ordinary 
workman : so that we can understand how the offering 
of a candle at the shrine of a saint may have been the 
sacrifice of a coveted personal enjoyment. 

The population of England in the fourteenth century 
is estimated to have been from one and a half to two 
millions. It is suj)posed that almost the same area of 
arable land was then cultivated as at present ; but the 
rate of production was of course much less, — not more 
than one-fourth of what it now is. The condition of 
things in England as affecting the rate of wages was 
much changed in the fourteenth century by the diuiinu- 
tion of the population caused by the Black Death. This 
plague destroyed so many people during the last half of 
that period that we may trace to its effect the birth of 
a new social and industrial England. The ordinary 
operation of the feudal system seems out of place in the 
presence of this terrible and unforeseen calamity. We 
enter in this strange way upon the struggle of economic 
natural forces against the arbitrary rule of the aristo- 
cratic element. But this is a subject large enough for 
future separate consideration. 

The general obligations of a feudal vassal in England 
were service in council, in the court of law, and in the 
field. He was not bound by the conditions of his tenure 
to serve his lord out of the kingdom, and the period 
of his service was usually settled at forty days in each 



ENGLISH FEUDAL SERVICES. 243 

year. The usual feudal incidents, the obligation to re- 
deem his lord from captivity, to contribute to the dowry 
of his daughter, and to pay him a certain sum when his 
son became a knight, — reliefs, as tliese payments were 
called, — were commuted by Magna Charta for a sum of 
money, about five pounds for each kniglit's fee. Gener- 
ally, the vassal forfeited his fief if he did not perform 
the obligations annexed to it, or if he made any attempt 
on the person or honor of his lord or of the members of 
his family. But these obligations were reciprocal. The 
lord was not allowed even to raise a stick against his 
vassal. Insult, outrage, or the denial of aid or justice 
entitled the vassal to withdraw his fief, that is, to refuse 
service, and even to declare war upon his lord. It may 
be that in the practical administration of such a system 
injustice was often done. But then, as now, the reason 
was not that such acts were not prohibited. The great 
curse of the time was its over-legality, and the belief that 
abuses could be rooted out by multiplying statutes and 
rules. Every relation in life in those days was looked 
at in a feudal aspect. The knight not only received and 
held his fief according to the well-settled feudal law, 
but a woman was bound to her husband by a promise 
resembling an oath of homage. In religion, men de- 
bated whether the Pope and the Emperor were each su- 
preme in his own domain, each owing the other service 
for some fief held of him, or whether both held only of 
Christ as their suzerain. In law, the theory that the mon- 
archy was a fief and the administration of justice one of 



244 MEDLEVAL HISTORY. 

its necessary appurtenances has stamped itself on all Eng- 
lish legislation. Ev^en the towns as soon as they became 
corporations were regarded as t)ersons, with the rights 
and obligations of feudal barons, and treated as such. 

The changes in the English Constitution which had 
the most permanent influence in the subsequent history 
of the country are those which gave increasing power 
to Parliament at the expense of the king's prerogative, 
or rather the claims asserted by virtue of this preroga- 
tive by the Norman and Plantagenet kings, and the 
gradual extinction of villenage. These great changes, 
which have so completely moulded modern England, 
took place during and after the reign of Edward III., 
1328, and during that hundred-years' quarrel among his 
descendants of the houses of York and Lancaster, called 
the War of the Roses. I can only give here a summary 
of the great work done in that period. 

During this era, especially in the reign of Richard II. 
and Henry IV., Parliament succeeded: 1. In estab- 
lishing its exclusive right of taxation. This, as need not 
be said, was a fundamental question, not much raised 
in the earlier reigns of the Norman kings, as the public 
expenditure was met by the incidents of knight's service, 
and by money raised by the scutage tax in commutation 
thereof, and by the private estates of the king himself. 
It is to be observed that this exclusive right of taxa- 
tion, as well as nearly all the other guarantees of per- 
sonal liberty and the security of property obtained in 
this era, were not purchased, as is usually said, by the 



POWERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 245 

blood of Englishmen too proud to be slaves. It is 
nearer the truth to say that most of the great measures 
for securing the freedom of the subject were literally 
bought with money from the kings, and that their con- 
cessions of this kind, even Magna Charta itself, were 
grants made by these kings in the nature of a bargain, 
which those who suffered duly paid for. So much re- 
dress for so much money was the principle upon which 
the business was conducted. 2. Parliament gained not 
merely the power of taxation, but also the power to 
direct for what object the money raised by taxation 
should be expended. 3. It insisted, as I have already 
intimated, that its willingness to raise money for the 
king's service must depend upon the redress by the. king 
of the grievances (which were always numerous) of 
which it complained. 

The power of dispensing with the execution of statutes 
was a device of the king to free himself from the con- 
trol of his Parliament, the exercise of which in the days 
of James II. produced a revolution, and it seems to have 
been confined in the reigns of the Plantagenets rather to 
exempting individuals from penalties imposed by certain 
statutes, than to a practical disregard of the law itself. 
The last claim made good during these reigns in some 
respects w^as the most important of all, for it was no 
other than the right of the House of Commons to im- 
peach the ministers of the king for bad conduct. When 
we remember the theory of the English monarchy that 

the king can do no wrong, and that the ministers alone 

21^ 



246 MEDL^EVAL HISTORY. 

are responsible for what is done, we shall see the neces- 
sity not merely of the existence of some such powder as 
this, but of its exercise on proper occasions by a body 
representing the public, as the House of Commons does. 
I have dwelt on these claims made by the House of 
Commons, not merely because on this foundation rest 
the great principles of constitutional liberty in England, 
but also because we in this country have always adopted 
these great maxims of public liberty as fundamental in 
our systems of government, and have embodied them in 
our national and in all our State constitutions. They 
are the principles which have been usually attacked in 
various forms by the arbitrary measures of tyrants in 
England, and it will be observed with wdiat a true his- 
torical sense Englishmen protest against their invasion 
when they claim their observance, not as self-evident 
political truths, but as " the ancient and undoubted 
rights and privileges of the people of this realm." 

I can say but a few words now on the gradual ex- 
tinction of villenage in England. It will be remembered 
that the villeins were, in the beginning, simply slaves, 
forced to work on the estate of the lord at his arbitrary 
discretion. Their services, by mutual agreement with 
the lord, were commuted for money payments, and this 
arrangement became so established a custom that the 
villeins became, as I have said, copyholders, holding 
their little parcels of land by a secure tenure as long as 
they kept their part of the bargain. In this way many 
villeins or serfs rose from the condition of slaves to that 



THE LABOR QUESTION. 247 

of free laborers or even freeholders. Gradually, the 
increase of the population, and the frequent escape of 
the villeins from the manors to which they were bound 
to some town in which residence for a year made them 
free of their lords, converted many of them into free 
laborers. Tlieir number w^as further increased by the 
necessitv in which Edward III. during; liis lon<r reiirn 
found himself, of selling to these villeins their freedom 
for money to enable him to carry on his wars in France. 
With this new freedom came the desire for higher wages 
and a better social position. This naturally brought 
about a struggle between them and the employers of 
labor, for on abundance of labor everything depended. 
Gradually, by these and other means, the serf became 
detached from the land of the lord, and master of him- 
self, and compulsory labor became less common. 

The agricultural laboring class was fast growing, ap- 
parently by general tacit consent, into the condition of 
free laborers, when their situation became suddenly 
complicated by the unexpected event of wiiich I have 
spoken, the vast diminution of the population caused 
by the plague, or the Black Death, as it was called, 
about the middle of the fourteenth century. Half the 
population are said to have fallen, in a few years, vic- 
tims to this terrible disease, and one of the results, of 
course, would have been, had natural economic forces 
been permitted to have free play, to raise the price of 
labor by diminishing the number of laborers. The 
lords, however, found it impossible to pay the vastly 



248 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

increased prices for labor demanded by those who, for 
the time, commanded the labor market; and the culti- 
vation of the land seemed impossible. In order to 
cure the multitudinous evils which were caused by this 
state of affairs, Parliament passed the celebrated Statute 
of Laborers (1349), by which it was enacted that, 
notwithstanding the increased demand for labor, no 
higher or lower wages were to be paid for it than those 
customary before the Black Death ; and, moreover, the 
laborer was forbidden to quit his parish to seek em- 
ployment elsewhere. There seems to have been a 
belief, as I have said, arqong the laboring classes that 
the object of this statute was to restore them to the 
condition of mere villeins, as they had been before 
the system of payments in money had been adopted, 
placing, therefore, the price of their labor at the arbi- 
trary caprice of the lord. However that may be, the 
social revolt known in history as the rebellion of Wat 
Tyler and his associates broke out. This was in the 
reign of Richard II. ; and, as is w^ell known, the re- 
volt was quelled by measures of the utmost severity and 
cruelty. But, notwithstanding all the efforts made in 
the interests of the lords to enforce these statutes, and 
others of a later period founded on the same principle, 
the natural law of supply and demand was too strong to 
be permanently broken ; labor, as soon as the crisis passed, 
received its market price and value; and the demand 
for it, silently and surely, completely extinguished that 
modified form of slavery known as villenage. 



CHAPTEE IX. 

THE PAPACY TO THE EEIGN OF CHAPvLEMAGNE. 

In. studying the characteristic features of early me- 
diaeval history, we must be struck with the important 
place held in it by what we would now call ^^the religious 
element." The influence of this element was paramount 
in the development of civilization in Western Europe 
for at least seven centuries. The power of the Cliurch 
directed the course of the stream of history during these 
ages ; kings and nobles and people seem but instruments 
employed by Providence to establish a form of society 
of which the Church not only set forth the ideal concep- 
tion, but of which it was to be the true ruler. In this 
process the Church assumed to be both the teacher and the 
guide. The struggle between it and the wild world it 
sought to subdue was a conflict of mind against matter, 
of trained intelligence against brute force, of Christian 
truth and Christian virtues, sometimes, it is true, sadly 
obscured by baser motives, against the ferocity and bar- 
barism of the Teutonic tribes and their descendants, — an 
attempt, in short, to establish on earth the City of God. 

If organized Christianity, which is only another name 

f )r the Church, was so j^ow^erful an influence in mediaeval 

life and history, we must study its nature and pretensions 

during the earlier period which succeeded the destruction 

249 



250 MEDL-EVAL HISTORY. 

of the Roman authority in Western Europe. We have 
caught glimpses of the extent of that influence in our 
previous studies. We have, indeed, encountered the 
Pope and the Church at every step of our progress. 
The authority of the Church is a subject of such vast 
importance in the history of the mediaeval era, and an 
acquaintance with the theory on which it was based is 
so essential to any proper understanding of that history, 
that we must give a special consideration to its develop- 
ment. I shall treat now only of organized Christianity, 
or the Church, and not of those ideas and dogmas which 
made it a distinct religious creed or system. I do so 
for this simple reason, that whatever influence upon 
society of a general and permanent kind was exerted by 
Christianity as a system of doctrine was due, in great 
measure, to its having been brought to bear upon the 
minds of men through the organism of the Church. 
Society in its wild and chaotic condition during the 
decay of the Roman Empire was probably incapable of 
receiving moral impressions through the channels by 
which they are now conveyed, and it is the opinion of an 
historian as eminent as Guizot, and withal a Protestant, 
that it was the Church — that is, organized Christianity — 
which saved alike Christian dogma and Christian moral 
law from the ruin that fell on all else that was civilized 
after the irruption of the barbarians. 

The first thing that was needed to secure the general 
adoption at that time of any system either in the State 
or the Church was the belief that it was proclaimed by 



NATURE OF THE PAPAL RULE. 251 

an authority strong enough to enforce obedience, in civil 
government physical force, in religious opinion appeals 
to that religious or superstitious element in man which 
in all ages, when wisely made, have proved not only the 
strongest curb to keep in check his unruly passions, but 
also the most potent factor in moulding his destiny. 
What we have to do with, therefore, here is not Chris- 
tian doctrine, but the methods which were taken to en- 
force that doctrine, and particularly the agencies which 
were used for that purpose. I might even narrow the 
field we are to explore, and say that we are concerned 
more especially with one particular asjDCct or develop- 
ment of the Church, and that is the papacy. 

Whatever may have been originally the ideal and 
theoretical conception of the powder of the Church and 
the methods by which, in the beginning, it was organized 
for the government of the faithful, it is very clear that 
during the Middle Age, practically and as a matter of 
fact, all these powers were absorbed and exercised by 
the great institution called the papacy. During this 
period the Popes might have said of the Church, Ueglim, 
G^est moi, in the same sense that Louis XIY. said of the 
State, "IJetat, c'est moi^ Our business then for the 
purposes of mediaeval history is to study the nature, rise, 
and progress of the papal power. We must investigate 
this subject as a simple historical fact with which we 
meet, and not attempt to discuss any theories concerning 
it. W^e are not to enter on the question whether it was 
or was not a usurpation, whether it was or was not of 



252 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

Divine authority, whether its institution and its claims 
are recognized by the Bible. These questions are, of 
course, in one aspect vital; but for our purpose we must 
consider the papacy simply as an institution of control- 
ling influence upon the destiny of mankind through a 
long series of ages, and we must endeavor to account 
for its existence and for its power on historical grounds 
only. We must regard the papacy, as we would Chris- 
tianity itself, as an historical force of the first. magni- 
tude, and avoid as far as possible the dogmatic or theo- 
logical questions involved in its action. We meet it as 
we do any historical fact, and must try and explain its 
significance. 

What, then, is the papacy, and who is the Pope? 
The theory of the Roman Catholic Church is this : the 
Pope is the bishop of the See of Rome ; the bishopric 
of that city has a primacy above all the other bishoprics 
of Christendom, not merely because St. Peter was the 
first bishop of that city, but because he was divinely 
commissioned as the chief or prince of the Apostles, 
with powers for the government of the Church superior 
to all the others, and because, in the Divine order, all his 
rights and prerogatives, as Primate of the Church, are 
transferred to his successors, — bishops of Rome and 
Popes. The Pope, then, according to this theory, is 
the universal pastor, bishop, and ruler of the Catholic 
Church. By its members he is regarded as having ex- 
ercised these functions from the beginning; and those 
who deny the claims of the papacy admit that the Pope 



THE FIRST BISHOPS. 253 

is shown by Iiistory to have governed at least the 
Western Church since the fifth century as chief bishop, 
claiming to be successor of St. Peter as Bishop of Rome. 
A few words may be necessary here as to the his- 
tory of primitive church organization. It is said that 
bishops appear in Church history as governing or su- 
perintending more than one congregation as early as the 
second century; that they are not the officers spoken 
of in the Epistles as Presbuteroi or E'piscopoij both 
terms denoting the same officer in a single congrega- 
tion. At what era and by what process these Episcojjoi 
became rulers of churches, after the manner of later 
bishops, is not very clear ; and it does not concern us 
now. It is evident that they were supposed from early 
times to have possessed the apostolic authority and pre- 
rogative, and also the powder of transmitting the same 
to their successors in office. Whatever may have been 
the origin of the system, there can be no doubt as an 
historical fact that the organization of the Church, with 
bishops as its chief officers possessed of large powers, 
gradually extended over the greater part if not the 
whole of Christendom. These bishops were originally 
elected by the clergy with the consent of the laity within 
a particular city or district, afterwards called a diocese. 
The legislation of the Church, at least before Con- 
stantine, was conducted by a body of presbyters, called 
a council, under the presidency and direction of the 
bishop of the town or district. Gradually, power in 

the Church became more concentrated in the hands of 

22 



254 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

the bishops, and general councils of tlie whole Church, 
composed wholly of bishops, were called to settle the 
rules of doctrine and the discipline of its members 
throughout Christendom. 

After Christianity became the State religion of the 
Roman Empire, a number of dioceses, partly as a matter 
of convenience, and partly, no doubt, from the growth 
of an oligarchical spirit in the hierarchy, were grouped 
together in the more populous portions of the Empire ; 
and they were then called a province, the presiding 
bishop of this province being known in the East as a 
metropolitan, and in the AVest as an archbishop. Later, 
a still further concentration of the power of the bishops 
w^as made. A number of provinces w^ere united and 
formed a larger district, called a Patriarchate. There 
were originally four Patriarchates, each established in a 
capital city of a different portion of the Empire : An- 
tioch, Alexandria, Pome, were the seats of Patriarchs, 
not merely because they were chief cities of the Empire, 
but because the Christian Church in each of them had 
been founded by an apostle. To Jerusalem, as the 
sacred city, an honorary Patriarchate was assigned, 
while the dignity and importance of Constantinople 
as the capital of the Empire and the residence of the 
Emperor were recognized (not without a protest on the 
part of the others) by making the archbishop of that 
city a Patriarch also. These Patriarchs were, of course, 
personages of great importance and dignity, governing 
very large districts, made u}) of many dioceses and 



THE PATRIARCHATES. 255 

provinces. Each one was not only PatriaFcb, but metro- 
politan and bishop also. The question of the papacy, 
or the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, is involved in 
tbe relations of these Patriarchs to each otber. The 
Roman bishop claimed that to his See and Patriarchate 
belonged the primacy over all the others, — a claim 
founded not only upon his successorship to St. Peter, 
which in the fifth century was a recognized tenet of 
Western Christendom, but upon the alleged allowance 
of his claims by the decrees of early general councils 
of the Church, by whose authority an appeal in cases 
of disputed questions of doctrine and discipline was 
directed to be made to the See of Pome. Vague and 
shadowy as the claim of supremacy on the part of the 
Pope was in the beginning, it gradually grew in strength 
until it seemed to be fully recognized in the person of 
Pope Innocent L, A.D. 421, to whom and to whose 
successors the Emperor Valentinian III. directed that 
an appeal might be taken in questions involving the 
doctrines of the Church. Thus the pretensions of the 
Pope to a supremacy which made him practically the 
head of the Church were sanctioned by Imperial .as 
well as by ecclesiastical authority. 

There were many reasons, however, independent of 
his claim to the primacy founded upon Divine right as 
the successor of St. Peter, or upon the Imperial edict, 
which naturally inclined men to regard the Bishop of 
Rome as the fittest person for supreme bishop. In those 
days a visible unity, not merely unity of belief, but the 



256 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

recognition of an authority which could compel abso- 
lute orthodoxy and uniformity of creed, was considered 
essential to the life of the Church. To men educated 
by the Roman law, uniformity was the essential part of 
government. The doctrine of diversity in unity would 
iiave been inconceivable to the Churchmen as to the law- 
yers of the time ; and as to the doctrine of toleration, — 
'' the noblest innovation of modern times,'^ as we think 
it, — its advocacy then would have been considered rank 
blasphemy. This belief, of course, did not preclude 
disputes as to what true orthodoxy of "belief consisted 
in. On the contrary, never have there been more vio- 
lent controversies as to the fundamental doctrines of 
faith than during the first four centuries, while there 
were none in the East as to the form of Church gov- 
ernment or the extent of Church authority. 

These disputes rent the Eastern Church in twain, 
and all the wonderful acuteness and dialectics of the 
Greek mind were employed for centuries in incrusting 
the Christian faith with the subtile and curious conceits 
of the Oriental systems. The heresies of Arianism, 
Manicheism, Gnosticism, Pelagianism, and countless 
other forms of error, were the fruit of these specula- 
tions. In this confusion the Eastern Christians needed 
some arbiter whose authority to settle these questions 
should be generally recognized. To whom would they 
more naturally turn than to the Bishop of Rome ? He 
had important qualifications as a judge. Not only was 
he one of the four Patriarchs, but the only one who 



THE SUPREMACY OF ROME. 257 

had always kept his jurisdiction free from tliat taint 
of heresy which had infected from time to time all 
the others and thus lessened their catholic authority. 
Besides, he w^as the bishop of that great Imperial city 
whose constant prestige, as I have so often said, is one of 
the most salient facts in mediaeval history, and whose 
glory, in the minds of thoughtful men, had in no way 
been affected by the transfer of the capital of the Empire 
to Constantinople. They willingly recognized its bishop 
as the fittest judge. Indeed, to such men Rome was 
never as great as when it ceased to be the residence of 
the Emperor. As the Imperial authority declined, that 
of the Pope in Italy rose. To the mediaeval mind Im- 
perial Rome could never die. It was more Imperial 
when it became truly papal. Nothing is more striking 
than the contrast between the wretched Emperor Ho- 
norius hiding amidst the marshes of Ravenna from fear 
of the invading Goths, and the Pope, Innocent, who 
comes fearlessly forth, braving the anger of Alaric, in 
order to rescue from ruin the city which had been aban- 
doned by its legal defenders. 

Thus, everything seemed to tend to exalt the power 
of the Pope, as the time of the extinction of the Western 
Empire approached: the alleged Divine commission, the 
decrees of councils, the appeals to his decision of contro- 
verted questions, the general recognition of his authority 
by the Churches of the West, the decrepitude of the 
Imperial power, the removal of the capital to Constan- 
tinople, the prestige of Rome, and the position held by 

22- 



258 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

its bishop as the head of the only organization then 
existing capable of alleviating the miseries of the Gothic 
invasion of Italy, — all these things combined to make 
the mediaeval Pope. As the power of the Emperor in 
Italy and the West decayed, that of the Pope grew in 
vigor, in extent, and, naturally, in independence. A 
nominal recognition of the power of the Emperor at 
Constantinople and of that of his representative — the 
Exarch — in Italy in the general course of ecclesiastical 
legislation was for a time continued ; but on the great 
question of the supremacy of their See, the bishops of 
Eome, the Popes, from Innocent I. (411) to Gregory I. 
(590), gave no uncertain sound. The circumstances were 
propitious. The East was rent by dogmatic controversies, 
the West was overwhelmed by the barbarian invasions, 
and the Imperial authority, amidst all the distress and 
confusion of the times, was absolutely powerless. The 
Pope was the only surviving representative of a general 
authority, either as the protector of those who suffered 
from the miseries of the time, or as the supreme judge 
of what constituted the orthodox creed. This condition 
of affairs, combined with the Roman Imperial methods 
of exercising its authority, made the growth and evolu- 
tion of the papal power to the condition in which we 
find it in the beginning of the seventh century natural 
and inevitable. 

The Pope's power as that of the supreme and uni- 
versal bishop seems to have been universally recognized 
in the West in the time of Gregory the Great (590). 



THE PAPAL MISSIONARIES, 259 

Pie himself, not doubting that he was the true head of 
Cliristendom, was not satisfied merely to decide disputes 
whicli had arisen in long-established churches concern- 
ing doctrine and discipline, and to administer the ordi- 
nary affairs of the Church. He determined to show his 
appreciation of the responsibilities of this headship in a 
way which will probably strike us as affording at least 
the best proof of the earnestness of his convictions. He 
determined to convert distant England to Christianity 
by a missionary system organized by him and respon- 
sible to him alone for its methods of work. I need not 
repeat the story here which I have told in another chap- 
ter of this mission. St. Augustine in England and St. 
Boniface in Germany were in those countries the apos- 
tles not only of Christianity, but of that form and organ- 
ization of Christianity of which the Pope was the head. 
In the highest sense these missions were Christian, 
but in a most important sense they were eminently papal 
and Roman. Their converts in the vast regions in which 
they worked were not merely believers in Christian doc- 
trine, but they were the children of that form of doctrine 
established in Rome under its bishop, the Pope. Obe- 
dience to the Pope was the first lesson they were tauglit 
in their new vocation, and mediaeval history is very 
much taken up, as has been said, in showing the influ- 
ence of this one principle of belief upon their destiny. 
Certainly it is not necessary to go further in order to 
explain the historical fact of the general recognition 
during the Middle Age of the spiritual supremacy of 



260 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

the Pope. We have seen the Churches established 
before these claims were generally acknowledged bow 
with deference to the decision of the Church of Rome as 
^' omnium orbis et urbis ecdesiarum mater et caput/^ and 
now we see the people of England and Germany and 
the remotest North taught Christianity by Roman au- 
thority and as embodied in Roman doctrine. There is 
said to be no better title to a certain kind of property 
than that by prescription ; and if such a title be held 
good to ecclesiastical claims, certainly those of the papacy 
would seem, so far as we have yet investigated them, 
well established in history. 

The papal power was greatly consolidated by the con- 
dition of Italy during the decline of the Empire. The 
Pope here appears under a new aspect. He is no longer 
a mere arbiter of theological controversies, but a civil 
ruler. He is not in those early days an ambitious chief 
seeking every opportunity to extend his domain, but 
rather a promoter of civilization and order, a benefactor 
of the human race forced by necessity to exercise a cer- 
tain sort of temporal power for the defence and protec- 
tion of his countrymen. It has sometimes been said 
that the cry of satisfaction, almost of triumph, of the 
Christian writers of the day on the capture of Rome by 
Alaric in 411 was unseemly, and at any rate that the 
early Christians understood nothing of patriotism in the 
Roman sense. There is no doubt but that Rome rose 
from the ruins after the siege of Alaric, a Christian city. 
The pagan writers insisted that its capture was due to its 



THE POPES DURING THE INVASIONS. 261 

abandonment of its old gods ; but the Pope, while urging 
the faithful to pray for their deliverance to the God of the 
Christians, tried in vain to rouse the Emperor, Honorius, 
to employ the duly-appointed human means, his own mili- 
tary power, for its defence. It is not to be wondered at 
that the Christians should rejoice that such a phantom 
of the once invincible Imperial authority should at last 
disappear with the paganism which was regarded as the 
source of its feebleness, nor that the Pope, whose cour- 
age against the barbarian was as conspicuous as the or- 
thodoxy of his belief, should become, practically, ruler of 
the people of Rome by the best of all titles, that founded 
in their gratitude for his devotion to their interests. 

In the dreary days of violence which followed, the 
Popes became, naturally and necessarily from their po- 
sition and from the utter feebleness of the Emperors and 
the Exarchs their representatives, the rulers of Rome 
temporal as well as spiritual. Those were days either of 
actual invasion or of the perpetual fear of invasion which 
threatened by its violence to uproot the very foundations 
of Roman society. During this reign of terror, which 
lasted nearly two hundred years, the Popes seem to have 
been the only officials who did not lose their courage and 
presence of mind. No matter how alarming the occasion 
for their services, they \vere always equal to the occasion. 
Alaric, who destroyed so rudely the charmed life which 
Rome had lived for more than a thousand years, was a 
Christian, or professed to be such, but he and his fol- 
lowers were really barbarians in their temper, and bent 



262 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY, 

on pillage, which spared the riches consecrated to religious 
uses only because of the intervention of Pope Innocent. 
Attila was a barbarian of the barbarians, a wild savage 
drunk with blood, and well named "the Scourge of 
God." Yet Pope Leo the Great hesitated not, with only 
two companions, to confront this man in his fury, and 
persuaded him (whether by exciting his superstitious 
terrors or not it is hard to say) to spare the city of St. 
Peter from pillage by his wild hordes. He was not as 
successful in inducing Genseric, the Vandal chieftain, to 
follow the example of Attila ; but courage and a sense 
of duty inspired him to make the attempt. 

So with Pope Gregory I. at the period of the inva- 
sion of Italy by the fierce Lombards. Here again, like 
his predecessors, the Pope was obliged to assume the 
virtual sovereignty of Rome or expose the people to ruin. 
He alone could protect Rome and what remained of its 
inhabitants from slavery. When he became Pope, the 
city was suffering from a famine which was only relieved 
by his giving up for its use the grain produced by the 
Church estates in Sicily. For seven-and-twenty years 
the people of Rome had lived in fear of the occupation 
of the city by the Lombards. These wild hordes swept 
through the peninsula, compelling the tillers of the soil 
to pay them a third part of their produce, plundering 
churches and monasteries, destroying the cities, and 
mowing down the people like corn. One of their armies 
attacked Rome, and was driven off by the defenders of 
the city, whose courage was animated by the intrepid 



THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 263 

Pontiif. Meanwhile^ he was seeking peace with the king 
of these fierce Lombard warriors, not merely by using 
earthly weapons, but also by efforts to convert them 
through their queen, Theodelinda, to the orthodox and 
Catholic faith, for they were Arians. The argument from 
the cross seems to have been more potent than that of 
the sword. It is not easy to understand, perhaps, all the 
reasons for their sudden conversion. The result was 
that their attitude was changed from one of armed hos- 
tility to that of professed friendship, that the blessings 
of peace were secured to Italy, and that the Lombards 
were made for the time obedient sons of the Churcih, 
when the Pope's nominal sovereign the Emperor was not 
only unable to aid him, but by his folly was prolonging a 
war which he was unable to bring to a successful issue. 
"For a short time longer,^' says an eminent writer, 
''the wreck of the Imperial dominion in Italy was pre- 
served by the sole influence, by the religious eloquence 
and authority, of the unarmed Bishop of Pome. Such 
was in those days the influence and power of the clergy, 
so completely were they recognized as the true saviors 
of society, that they were able not merely to dictate their 
policy to armed and powerful sovereigns, to arrest bar- 
barian invasion, and to snatch, as it were, conquests 
already in their hands, but in every quarter of Western 
Europe kings were seen abdicating their thrones, placing 
themselves at the feet of the Popes as humble mendi- 
cants, and submitting to the provisions and discipline 
of monks. No less than eight Anglo-Saxon princes 



264 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

became monks before the middle of the eighth century, 
and about the same period kings of France and of 
Lombardy descended from their thrones and laid their 
temporal government down before the head of Chris- 
tendom.'^ In this way, gradually, but surely and in- 
evitably, grew into men's minds the conception of the 
Pope not merely as the great high-priest of the Church, 
but as a sovereign in Italy wielding a power which, 
indirectly it is true, but none the less certainly, affected 
the policy of all temporal rulers. Here we find the 
germs of that characteristic feature of the later Middle 
Age, the firm belief held not only by the Popes them- 
selves, but by what may be called the Church opinion 
of Europe, that the temporal and the spiritual power 
were and ought to be inseparably united. Thus the 
power of the two swords, as they were called, in the 
hands of the successors of St. Peter, either of which 
might be rightfully wielded as the exigencies of his 
office required, grew gradually familiar to men's minds. 
It must be remembered that all political ideas in the 
Middle Age were conceived under a theological aspect 
and were worked out under a feudal form. The world 
was regarded, as it had been represented by St. Augus- 
tine in his great work on "the City of God," as a grand 
stage, upon which the Divine drama of the redemption 
of man was being enacted. The creation of the world 
and the establishment of human society were designed 
chiefly that the city of man should become the city of 
God. The chief end of life was to accomplish that 



THEORY OF THE CHURCH'S POWER. 265 

object, and the Christian Church had been established 
as the Divine means by which that end was to be 
reached. Hence the Church, with the Pope at its head, 
was fully endowed by the Almighty, as His representa- 
tive on earth, with what was called the power of the 
keys, — the power of opening and shutting the doors of 
the city of God, either in this world or in the next, to 
all who sought admission to it. Out of this theory, 
universally recognized in the Middle Age, grew a 
strong faith in the extraordinary sacerdotal power of 
the Church, and necessarily a profound conviction of the 
supremacy of its discipline in earthly affiiirs, including 
all man's relations to society, both civil and ecclesias- 
tical. To the mass of Christians the Church and the 
State were one and indivisible ; and if, for convenience' 
sake, governments were in some respects administered 
with special reference to the promotion of worldly inter- 
ests, it was always understood that the exercise of such 
a power should be, if not subordinate, at least not in 
conflict with the policy and aims of the Church. 

Thus, the Pope, shocked by the decree of the Emperor 
at Constantinople which forbade the use of images in 
the churches, and powerless to oppose its enforcement, 
placed as he was between the robber Lombard king 
and the heretic Emperor, did not hesitate to cast off 
his allegiance, and to call in the aid of the Frankish 
kings to support by the sword the opinions of the West- 
ern Church in regard to image-worship. At the same 
time, by an exercise of his ecclesiastical power proper, 

23 



266 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

he excommunicated the Emperor and those in the East 
who held with him the iconoclastic opinions. These 
transactions^ as I have explained elsewhere, form a most 
momentous epoch in human history. They first made 
the Pope, in any direct and proper sense, a temporal 
ruler, for the zealous Franks bestowed upon him the 
conquered Exarchate, and the result was the final sepa- 
ration of the East from the West, — a separation far 
more important in its effect than the abdication, in 476, 
of the Emperor of the West. More than all, they led 
to the establishment, in the person of Charlemagne and 
his successors, of a new or revived Roman Empire, with 
such relations between the Emperor and the Pope as to 
make the events of subsequent mediaeval history chiefly 
illustrations of the conflict between the lofty claims of 
sacerdotal authority as established by the Church and 
the inextinguishable passion of personal independence 
in the Teutonic race. 

The Popes and the Emperors become from the be- 
ginning of the ninth century the great personages of 
mediaeval history. In order to show how natural and 
easy seemed the path by which the Pope, in the year 
800, reached the point where, as vicegerent of God on 
earth, he could bestow the Imperial diadem of the 
Caesars on Charlemagne with the prerogatives of the 
world-monarch, it is only necessary to say here that no 
one at that time was any more inclined to doubt the 
power of the Pope to create a new Emperor, if the 
interests -of the Church required it, than his right to 



GREA TNESS OF THE EARL Y POPES. 2(j7 

excommunicate the old one for lieresy, or to renounce 
from the same motive his allegiance to that Emperor at 
Constantinople who was the true successor of Augustus 
and of Constantine. 

There is one cause of the rapid and extraordinary 
development of the power of the papacy which we must 
not fail to observe ; and that is the greatness of the men 
who filled St. Peter's chair at the important epochs of 
its earlier history. They were not merely ecclesiastics. 
Had they been such, the papacy, so far as we can see, 
would never have consolidated its power, nor have influ- 
enced human history as it has done. They were states- 
men as well, — that is, the men of their age who had the 
justest conceptions of the needs of that age and adopted 
the wisest meafts to secure their ends. 

In one aspect only was the end proposed to himself 
by each Pope the same. They all equally aimed to 
secure the supremacy of the See of St. Peter, doubtless 
because they all believed that such was the Divine order. 
Popes like Innocent and Leo and Gregory are called 
great by the Church historians, and, on the whole, the 
title seems to be well deserved. They were great, not 
merely because in a rude age they established the supe- 
riority of mind over force, but also because they con- 
firmed the supremacy of the See of Rome in the face 
of the most formidable obstacles. Their greatness con- 
sisted, among other things, in their capacity to make all 
the circumstances by which they were surrounded at a 
particular time subserve their chief purpose. Whether 



268 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 



ill the days of their weakness they thought it expedient 
to flatter the vanity of Constantine, or, as tliey grew 
stronger, to denounce the impiety of Theodosius, 
whether by means of their example and discipline they 
were striving to teach the lessons of Christian charity 
to the Roman population corrupted by cruelty and vice, 
or whether they were asserting their claims to be the 
arbiters of orthodoxy in the Church, whether they were 
deprecating the wrath of Alaric or Genseric or Attila, 
which threatened their destruction, or asserting a Divine 
right to excommunicate one Emperor of the world be- 
cause he was a heretic and to substitute another for 
him who was orthodox, — no matter, I say, what hap- 
pened, the Popes I have named seemed to know how 
to treat each event in such a way as to increase and 
consolidate the power of the Roman See. Their chief 
aim, undoubtedly, was to place their spiritual power 
upon a firm foundation; but, this once secured, the re- 
sult was for centuries the practical subordination of the 
temporal power to the spiritual. And we are not to for- 
get that the Pope's power, both in the Church and in the 
State, thus grew naturally and logically out of oppor- 
tunities wisely used, as they occurred, to strengthen it. 

It remains to consider what history teaches us con- 
cerning what was good and what was evil in this papal 
power so highly exalted, as well as the nature of its in- 
fluence upon the progress and civilization of mankind. 
AYe can only consider this subject satisfactorily by ob- 
serving the result at different periods of history. AVe 



EFFECT OF THE PAPAL RULE. 269 



may find that what was good in itself and adapted to 
the needs of society at one time may have become at 
another, from a change of circumstances, a source of 
unmixed evil. Let us consider in this chapter some 
features of the papal policy as they are shown by tlie 
study we have made of its history to the year 800. 

We must try, of course, in order to form a correct 
judgment, to place ourselves in the position of those 
who lived and were forced to act in those days when the 
power of the papacy was developing its pretensions to 
the government of the world, and we must not apply 
our modern standard to a condition of the world's his- 
tory wholly different from our own. Adopting such a 
method, we can hardly doubt that the papacy, whatever 
we may tliink of it as a proper form of Church govern- 
ment and of its claims now, was, at least in the earlier 
portion of the Middle Age, like many other institu- 
tions which then grew up, but which survived their use- 
fulness (the feudal system, for example), a necessity of 
the time. If we cannot regard it as an ideal system 
suited to all times, yet we may think it the best possible 
system under the circumstances in which it was placed 
by the ruin of the Empire. To reach this conclusion, 
we must carefully consider the anarchy and confusion in 
Western Europe in that era when the mission of the 
Church was naturally to make these barbarians ortho- 
dox Christians, and to assimilate, if possible, their pe- 
culiarities with whatever was good in the heritage of 

the Roman civilization. I have certainly said enough 

23* 



270 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

heretofore of the habits and ideas of these heathen in- 
vaders to prove tliat if they were to be made Christians 
at all, or to become civilized in the Roman sense, there 
was but one way to accomplish these objects, and that 
was by the wise use of the force of a strong will, or 
even of a despotic government. 

What would have become of Christianity in those 
days of invasion if a system of equality among the 
faithful in the administration of its government had 
prevailed such as existed in the apostolic times among 
populations accustomed for ages to unquestioning sub- 
mission to the Eoman law because it was the law? 
If such a system had been introduced as a means of 
governing Christian communities and of propagating 
Christianity among the barbarian converts, we can 
hardly doubt that it would have failed. We have only 
to recall the strange methods l>y which, in accordance 
with the manners of the time, these tribes became Chris- 
tian, to answer such a question. Consider, for instance, 
the conversion of the Saxons on the banks of the Elbe 
by Charlemagne, when he gave his conquered enemies 
the alternative of being baptized or of being drowned ; 
or that of the followers of Clovis, who became Chris- 
tians at the bidding and following the example of their 
chief. All the tribes of the invasion, we must remem- 
ber, were made up of those in whom the instinct of 
savagery could only be rooted out by persistent and 
irresistible force, and, as far as Christianity and its 
special doctrines were concerned, these barbarians were 



^ THE CHURCH'S VISIBILITY AND UNITY. 271 

mere children, and needed a long education. The great 
evangelic truths, charity, justice, chastity, meekness, 
gentleness, were precisely the qualities, of all others, 
which these rude children of the North most thoroughly 
despised, and the only way to give them control over 
their lives was to teach them by an authority they were 
bound to respect, for in such a way only had they always 
been taught. To suppose that a system based upon such 
doctrines could by the force of mere moral suasion, as 
it is called, maintain any practical control over the lives 
of these barbarians, or that Christianity could have sur- 
vived or been propagated among these tribes under any 
conceivable form of self-government, seems to me the 
greatest of delusions. 

"We must not neglect two peculiarities of this organi- 
zation, which I have heretofore insisted upon, as most 
important in the position of the Church in those days, 
its visibility and its unity. The Church and the Pope at 
its head formed a visible power ; and to the mind of the 
Middle Age, which viewed every principle in its concrete 
and not in its abstract form, it assimilated the ecclesias- 
tical to the civil power, where it did not confound the 
two, always present, always ready to act, and always 
real. In the same way the unity of the power of the 
Church had immense influence upon the imagination of 
the barbarians. The power of tlie Church became as 
much a part of the life of every one as the })ower of 
the chief or king, and thus gradually and impercep- 
tibly, but surely, the foundations of the new society 



272 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

were laid. The barbarians respected the Church just 
as they respected any other power, simply because it 
presented itself as an official form of authority and 
could make itself felt. When the Church had reached 
this point in the control of its converts, it was able 
to enforce a practical obedience to the evangelic duties 
by means which they could appreciate. 

In the earlier ages this work was done through the 
agency of the bishops, who were not merely the stren- 
uous asse'rters of the doctrine and discipline of the 
Church within their jurisdiction, but also, as I have said, 
the strongest defenders of their people against the misery 
and tyranny of the time. In the early days of the inva- 
sions they were the champions and representatives of the 
conquered, and they sought to protect the lives and save 
from pillage and ruin the property of those whom they 
governed. For a long time they seem to have been 
the only recognized and official representatives of those 
who suffered from this rule of force. But the feudal 
system, which altered so profoundly the organization of 
civil society in an unexpected way, took away from the 
bishops the desire, perhaps the capacity, to exercise any 
longer this holy mission. The episcopate became an 
aristocracy, and was practically, for a time, absorbed by 
the State. The bishops appointed by the king formed 
a part of the aristocracy of the country. They became 
feudal barons, with rights of sovereignty and other feudal 
powers, such as were conferred upon the dukes and 
counts under that system. The wealth of many of their 



MEDIAEVAL BISHOPS. 273 

sees was enormous, and they soon exhibited the same 
tastes and the same passions as the aristocracy of which 
they formed part. They neglected the cure of souls ; 
they became too feeble or too indolent to defend the 
rights of the Church against the encroachments of the 
warrior chiefs; and very often they forgot their duty and 
gave themselves up to the pleasures and occupations of 
the world around them. 

In this condition they ceased to be, as was proper and 
natural, any longer the guides of the Christian people. 
Under these circumstances the power of the Church was 
practically, for the time, taken out of their hands by 
the Pope. Certainly nothing is more remarkable in 
the writings of those Popes whom history calls great, 
before the year 800, than the manner in which they de- 
nounce the faithlessness of the bishops, and the earnest- 
ness with which they protest against that fatal vice of 
the feudal system which permitted these prelates to pur- 
chase their sees of the king, thus committing that most 
grievous of ecclesiastical sins, simony, or the purchase 
of Church dignities for money, to the disgrace of their 
order, in violation of the canons of the Church, and 
to the ruin of the people committed to their charge. 
Organized Christianity seemed to be in danger of be- 
coming a Caliphate, where the head of the State would 
be practically also the head of the Church. The Popes, 
with a fine instinct of the duties of their position, be- 
gan a conflict to assert their jurisdiction in the appoint- 
ment of bishops, — a dispute which, under the name of 



274 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

tlie War of the Investitures, was waged for centuries, 
and of which we shall speak in its proper place. 

One of the peculiarities of the papacy in these times, 
when all else was local, narrow, and separatist, was its 
thoroughly cosmopolitan spirit. Deeply impressed with 
the belief that the Christian religion was a world-religion, 
Catholic in its highest sense, all their measures were 
taken to make their ideal conception of it a reality. 
This is remarkably illustrated by their policy in regard 
to Christian missions. They began properly by the effort 
made by Gregory I. in 590 to convert the Anglo-Saxons 
in England, and were followed by the work of Boniface 
in Germany and Anskar in Denmark. The result was 
not merely to bring the population of these countries 
into the obedience of the Roman See, but also to aid 
greatly in bringing them within the pale of Roman civ- 
ilization. Nothing tended more to maintain the condition 
of barbarism in Europe than the long-continued separa- 
tion and isolation in which the people lived. Gradually 
they were brought into relations with each other which 
had a common basis ; and the two agencies which had 
most to do with fusing them together were a common 
Christianity organized under a supreme head, and the 
Roman law and system of administration. 

Modern civilization is much indebted to the work of 
the early Popes acting in opposition to the authority of 
the kings, and very often to that of the bishops, many 
of whom had become under the feudal system thor- 
oughly secularized. As I have said before, I am not 



PRETENSIONS OF THE PAPAL POWER. 275 

concerned here with the question how far under the 
Popes was established a system of government unlike 
that of the apostles or that of the early Christians, but 
with their efforts to civilize and humanize the savages 
by making them Christians, and to prevent the Church, 
and the riches with which it had been endowed, from 
becoming the prey of the spoiler. While there were 
many very bad Popes in this era, the greatest and best 
also then ruled the Church. To the exercise of their 
power it is due, among other things, that the sanctity 
of married and domestic life has been surrounded by so 
many safeguards in the habits and opinions of modern 
Europe ; that Christian charity is coextensive with Chris- 
tian belief; that the evils of slavery and cruelty, deep- 
rooted in Roman as in barbarian society, were mitigated ; 
that, by means of the discipline which they enforced, the 
ideal at least of justice and right was maintained; and 
that the practical equality of all men as Christians was 
insisted upon. 

These early Popes did, no doubt, a noble and fruitful 
work, but it was done on a principle and assumption 
which modern society has refused to recognize as a true 
guide; but we must not misjudge them on that account. 
That principle was the supremacy of their own authority 
in the last resort in all cases. To it all power on earth, 
civil and ecclesiastical, must bow. For a time that prin- 
ciple was, as we have seen, universally recognized and 
assented to ; but shortly after the epoch of the coronation 
of Charlemagne as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, 



276 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

that great act which was designed to perfect and con- 
solidate the papal power, a conflict between its claims 
and those of the opposite principle, that of individualism, 
arose, and has continued in one form or another to this 
day. This conflict forms an era in the history of the 
papacy; and I propose in the next chapter to consider 
its earlier stages. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE PAPACY AND THE EMPIRE. 

The mediaeval theory of the relations between Church 
and State was supposed to have found a practical solu- 
tion in the revival of the Western Empire, and the 
coronation of Charlemagne as Emperor of what is called 
the Holy Roman Empire, by the Pope or Bishop of 
Rome, in the year 800. That theory, in its fullest 
development, is thus set forth by Mr. Bryce : '^ The 
Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire are 
one and the same thing in two aspects. Catholicism, 
the principle of the universal Christian society, is also 
Romanism; that is to say, it rests upon Rome as the 
origin and type of its universality, manifesting itself 
in a mystic dualism which corresponds to the two na- 
tures of its Founder. Opposition between two servants 
of the same king is inconceivable, each being bound to 
aid and succor the other, the co-operation of both being 
needed in all that concerns the welfare of Christendom 
at large.'^ In this way the Pope and the Emperor 
divide the government of the whole world, and by it 
the only self-consistent union of Church and State is 
reached. The rightful Pope was he who had been 
canonically elected and was approved by the Emperor ; 

the rightful Emperor was that King of the Franks who 

24 277 



278 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

had been crowned by the Pope in Rome. The change 
from the old Roman system to that of the mediaeval age 
was supposed to be this, that while under the former 
the two offices of Imperator and Pontifex Maxim us 
were held by the same person, in the latter their duties 
w^ere performed by two, each supi)osed to be governed 
by the same impulse. In a previous chapter we have 
endeavored to explain the motives and objects of the 
original parties to this agreement, — Charlemagne and 
the Pope; and we have now to consider the practical 
working of the system in the hands of their successors. 
We must not judge of the wisdom or political sagacity 
of those who maintained this theory of the dualism of 
the world-monarchy and the world-religion by what we 
know, from subsequent history, of its lamentable failure. 
We should rather remember that at the time it was 
adopted, or rather during many ages before and subse- 
quent to its formal establishment in the reign of Charle- 
magne, this theory was perfectly in accordance with the 
intellectual wants of Europe. Catholicism was not 
then a tyranny, for the speculations it permitted were 
fully commensurate with the wants of the best thinkers 
of the age. It was not a sect or an isolated influence 
acting in the midst of Europe and forming a weight 
in the balance of power, but rather an all-pervading 
energy, animating and vivifying the whole social system. 
During the period when the papacy asserted its loftiest 
claims to the government, ecclesiastical and civil, of the 
world, there was a certain unity of type of thought and 



THE NEW THEORY IN PRACTICE. 279 

belief as to the nature and lawfulness of this form 
of government. The feudal system, the monarchy, the 
laws, the studies, even the amusements of the people, 
all grew out of ecclesiastical teaching and embodied 
ecclesiastical modes of thought. The Church, with the 
Pope at its head, was the very heart of Christendom, 
and the spirit that radiated from it penetrated into all 
the relations of life, and colored the institutions it did 
not create. 

Notwithstanding, however, the universal faith of 
Christendom in this magnificent scheme of the proper 
relations between the Church and the State, as repre- 
sented by the Pope and by the Emperor, history shows 
us that for the special purpose it had in view it was a 
stupendous mistake. Obstacles to its full development, 
which no one at the time it was adopted could have an- 
ticipated, soon made its success hopeless. It is with the 
nature and force of these obstacles that we are concerned 
here. In one sense their history illustrates an important 
phase of the strife out of which modern life and modern 
ideas were evolved, for it exhibits not merely a struggle 
for power between the Church and the State, but also a 
conflict between the principle of authority and that of 
individualism, a conflict perpetually going on in Euro- 
pean life and inseparable from its constitution. 

What, then, does history tell us of the manner in 
which the alliance between the Pope and the Emperor, 
as settled at the coronation of Charlemagne, was carried 
out ? The great Emperor, as I need not repeat, was in 



280 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

one sense the most powerful champion and advocate of 
the Church in all history. Practically, he fulfilled the 
functions of defender of the universal or catholic faith 
as a duty which he had solemnly assumed at his corona- 
tion. He was in this sense the most active and efiBcient 
of missionaries. But in so doing Charlemagne was in 
this sense only under the orders of the Pope, that he 
considered it his duty as Koman or Christian Emperor 
to enlarge the boundaries and enforce the discipline of 
the Church. With the title he had assumed also the 
Imperial power of a Theodosius or a Justinian, both of 
whom claimed to rule the Church and the Empire as 
sovereign. His laws or decrees which fix the obliga- 
tions, the revenues, and even the duties of the clergy 
are issued in the name of the Emperor. They are mo- 
narchical and Imperial, and not papal or even synodical. 
The claim that the Imperial crown w^as the gift of 
the Pope was not set forth by the Church authorities 
during the reign of the Emperor. It would have been, 
indeed, singularly out of place to have done so when 
Charlemagne was recognized not only as Emperor and 
world-monarch, but as King of the Franks, with abso- 
lute power over the estates both of the Church and of 
the laity. The Emperor was a faithful son of the 
Church, but he took his own way of showing his 
fidelity. He founded many bishoprics, endowed many 
monasteries, and gave to the claim to tithes the sanc- 
tion of Imperial law ; but all these steps to aggrandize 
the Church were taken without consulting tlie Pope, and 



THE EARLY EMPERORS AND THE POPES. 281 

simply from his sense of what was fitting in him to 
do as the ruler of Christendom. The Church influence, 
then, in his day and in that of his successor was not 
such as to mak6 him that obedient son of the Pope 
which perhaps the theory of his relations to the head 
of the Church implied that he should become, and 
which in the later days, when Popes were stronger and 
Emperors weaker than they were in those of Charle- 
magne, formed the basis of their relations to each other. 
The Popes in the time of Charlemagne and that of his 
son, Louis the Pious, were in no condition to dictate to 
the Emperors their policy, even if they could not wholly 
approve it. It is worthy of remark that during a large 
portion of the Middle Age an order of the Pope might 
strike terror into the hearts of the rulers of the most dis- 
tant countries and of the Emperor himself, and yet the 
Pope in Pome itself was often at the mercy of a mere 
mob. Such was not the case in the day of Charlemagne. 
His thoroughly Imperial attitude (in the Roman sense) 
towards the Church was fully recognized, and even the 
irregularities of his own private life, especially in his 
marriage relations, were regarded at Rome at least with 
tenderness. In the ninth and tenth centuries the Popes 
were forced to lean for support more and more on the 
strong arm of the Emperors. With their local au- 
thority set at defiance, and their lives even threatened 
by the Roman populace or by the fierce barons of the 
Campagna, they were only too glad to seek aid from the 

Emperors, successors of Charlemagne, who alone could 

24* 



282 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

restore them to the exercise of their lawful spiritual 
power. 

The theory of Charlemagne's time of the mutual in- 
terdependence of the Empire and the papacy had but a 
one-sided application for many years after the death of 
the great Emperor and of his descendants, and during 
the fierce struggle which ensued upon the extinction of 
his posterity among the princes of Italy for the supreme 
rule of that country. The Popes were often the nomi- 
nees of the Emperor, always more or less dependent 
upon his authority for the maintenance of their position, 
and any attempt, under such circumstances, to assume 
that haughty attitude towards the Empire which be- 
came in later days habitual, on the ground of their 
spiritual supremacy, would have been as futile as it 
would have been ill-timed. The weapons in the spir- 
itual armory were carefully preserved, but they were 
not used until the times grew more propitious and men 
occupied the chair of St. Peter who knew how to wield 
them. 

The papacy itself, from the middle of \\\^ ninth to 
the middle of the tenth century, was in a state of ab- 
solute degradation and abasement. It was the prize 
sought for by violent, ambitious, and dissolute men, 
and, when gained, its holy office was defiled by the 
crimes of those who held it. Its moral power, in Italy 
at least, seemed for the time lost. In these dark days, 
so far from the Empire being controlled by the Pope, it 
was the Pope himself and the most sincere and religious 



THE WORK OF HILDEBRAND. 283 

Churchmen of the time who constantly appealed to the 
Emperor to save the papacy from absolute ruin. 

About the middle of the eleventh century a change or 
revival takes place, and the great figure of Hildebrand, 
afterwards Gregory VII., comes into view. He presents 
himself not only as a reformer of the discipline of the 
clergy, but as having established practically u2)on a new 
basis the relations of the spiritual with the civil power. 
Gregory YII. belonged to that strong race of monks 
who were the bravest and most earnest reformers of 
society in Western Europe in the darkest days of the 
Middle Age. Surely, if there ever was a time when 
reform of the most sweeping kind was needed, both in 
Church and in State, to save society from relapsing into 
barbarism, it was in the middle of the eleventh century, 
when the influence of Hildebrand became conspicuous. 
The Church had become completely secularized, by which 
comprehensive word I mean that its humanizing and civ- 
ilizing character, the life-giving influence of the spirit of 
Christianity, of which it was the representative, had been 
almost destroyed. The power of its discipline was made 
subordinate to the rule of force, which then governed the 
world under the name of the feudal system, of which 
the bishops were often among the richest and most 
powerful members. The distinguishing features of all 
true civilization, reason, right, and justice, which it was 
the great office of the Church to embody and to main- 
tain, had almost disappeared from the control of aflliirs. 
Pope after Pope was elected by men moved only by 



284 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

the furious passions of the Roman mob or by the plun- 
dering spirit of the barons of the Roman Campagna ; 
the riches of the Church, which had so largely increased 
as to give to its higher officials the control of nearly 
half of the cultivated land of Europe, were so diverted 
from their original use and intention as to convert the 
bishops into mere feudal barons, to the great loss and 
suffering of God's poor. The grand dream of Charle- 
magne, which sought, in the establishment of a universal 
monarchy, perpetually informed, penetrated, and guided 
by a universal religion, to establish on earth a society in 
which peace, based on the rule of law and order, was 
to reign, — all this fair dream was dis})elled by the rude 
shock which the infant European civilization received 
from the disintegration of his universal monarchy and 
the consequent return of that barbarism out of which 
his strong arm had lifted it. 

In the confusion and anarchy which grew out of this 
condition, the relations between the Pope and the Em- 
peror, which had been established by Charlemagne and 
reaffirmed by Otho the Great for the government of the 
world, remained nominally the same; but for nearly 
two centuries it had become practically impossible for 
either to exercise his respective functions as had been 
originally designed. To this severance of these rela- 
tions Hildebrand ascribed all the evils of the time, — the 
worst of all being, in his opinion, that practical depend- 
ence of the Popes on the secular power which had been 
substituted for the harmonious co-operation of each left 



THEOCRATIC PRINCIPLES. 285 

free to act in his own sphere. The venality, corruption, 
and neglect of duty on the part of the bishops, the con- 
sequent contempt of the discipline of the Church, the 
suffering, the oppression, and the degradation of the 
population, were in his opinion more or less due to this 
change. To Gregory VII. the reform needed was the 
revival of the theocratic spirit in European society and 
the control of its development by the power and disci- 
pline of the Church. The Imperial power, having, in 
his opinion, failed to do the duty assigned to it, must 
therefore be disowned. 

We must remember, in considering his plan, not only 
that Hildebrand was a monk with the most ascetic sj^irit 
and naturally imbued with the ideas of the cloister, but 
also that he was only carrying out the theory embodied 
in the great text-book on the relations between ecclesias- 
tical and civil power during the Middle Age, St. Augus- 
tine's famous treatise Be Civitate Dei, which had been the 
real basis of the arrangement with Charlemagne. To our 
modern notions Gregory's system appears very narrow, 
and insufficient, and wholly despotic ; but we need not 
for that reason doubt his earnestness and sincerity. And, 
further, we may believe that in what he did, lofty as 
were his claims, he was not moved by mere worldly 
ambition, a desire to advance himself or to aggrandize 
his family, as were so many of his successors, but that 
according to his lights he w^as a true reformer, striving to 
exalt the papacy as the best means, at least in that day, 
of ruling Christian society and realizing the true ideal 



286 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

conception of human life. Let us see, tlien, how he went 
about his work, and what that work was. 

Gregory's first object was to free the papacy from 
the control of the Emperor, who had ceased, in Jiis 
opinion, to be to the Church at least what he was de- 
signed to be. This was attempted by a decree of the 
Council held at Rome in 1059, under Nicholas II., before 
Gregory VII. became Pope, but manifestly prompted 
by him. This decree provided that hereafter the Pope 
should be elected by the Cardinals, and that neither the 
Roman populace nor the Emperor should interfere with 
the choice of the Church so expressed. This was a most 
important step in the theocratic programme. His second 
object when he became Pope (1073) was to reform the 
condition of the Church itself, especially as affected by 
two evils which he regarded as the crying evils of the 
time, — viz., simony, and the marriage of the clergy. 
In regard to simony, which is the purchase of an eccle- 
siastical preferment or office for money, it had always 
been considered, as already stated, one of the grossest 
ecclesiastical sins. Owing to the vast w^ealth of the 
Churcli, the chief offices in it, and especially the bishop- 
rics and the great abbacies, had become positions of great 
worldly power and dignity,* their occupants being re- 
garded throughout Europe as on the same social level as 
the chief feudal nobles. These places therefore, as was 
natural, were sought after with the greatest eagerness by 
the ambitious and aspiring, and were openly, in viola- 
tion of the canons of the Church, bought and sold as ii 



SIMONY, AND CELIBACY OF THE CLERGY. 287 

tJiey had been lay fiefs. They became simply feudal 
estates under another name. They were often occupied 
by persons wholly unfitted for the performance of epis- 
copal functions. Their wealth, and the peculiar tenure 
by which they held their estates, made the bishops 
throughout Western Europe almost as independent of 
the Popes as the great feudal lords were of the king or 
the Emperor. The faithful suffered instead of deriving 
aid and comfort from such bishops, for they were too 
often called upon to make up by severe exactions the 
sums paid by the incumbents for these places. 

In regard to the marriage of the clergy, although it 
would appear that the practice had been discouraged 
in the earlier age^ of the Church, and even possibly 
forbidden by the canons, yet in the clays of Gregory 
YII. it was connived at, or at least not made an offence 
against Church discipline, and a very large portion of 
the clergy, particularly in Germany and Southern Italy, 
were married men. On this subject there had long 
been a controversy between the monks and the secular 
clergy ; but it was not until the time of Gregory VII. 
that the monks were strong enough to carry out their 
long-cherished scheme of the enforced celibacy of the 
clergy by a decree of the Church. There are many 
obvious reasons why the celibacy of the priesthood at 
that time was the true policy of the Church, of which 
we need mention here only one, and that is, that in the 
feudal age, with the constant tendency then existing to 
make everything hereditary, the ministry of the Church, 



288 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

instead of being an office open to any one, no matter 
what his origin, who had a true vocation, would have 
become gradually the heritage of certain great families, 
and thus would have been established an aristocratic 
caste, a system in every way foreign to any proper 
conception of Christianity. 

These two evils, simony and a married clergy, were 
regarded by Gregory, doubtless, not only as crushing 
all true life out of the Church, but also as removing the 
priesthood from that ever-present law of discipline which 
he deemed essential for the proper performance of its 
work. The first act of his pontificate (1073) was to 
obtain from a Council at Rome a decree not merely pro- 
hibiting simony and marriage as ecclesiastical crimes, but 
absolutely invalidating all the sacraments performed by 
simoniacal or married priests, thus by one blow removing 
from the priestly office thousands of those who had up 
to that time peaceably, if not legally, exercised its func- 
tions. It is not easy to exaggerate the effect of such a 
shock as this anathema on the existing practice through- 
out Europe. But Gregory was a bold man, and, whether 
he was fighting with his own order who legally owed him 
obedience, or with the Emperor to whom legally he owed 
obedience, his courage in maintaining his theories never 
wavered. 

The quarrel which arose from the attempts of Gregory 
to accomplish his object by which he is best known in 
history is that with the Emperor Henry IV., generally 
known as " the War of the Investitures.'^ The scheme 



TWOFOLD POSITION OF THE BISHOPS. 289 

conceived by the Pope of ruling Europe by a theocracy 
was begun by these measures. We have seen how the 
clergy were brought under his obedience and discipline 
by the removal of the two great evils which he regarded 
as the principal obstacles to that design. The dispute 
about the new discipline, however, soon involved other 
questions of a more general kind, especially that of the 
Investitures, properly so called, in which it was to be 
settled whether the bishops and other high Church dig- 
nitaries should be appointed or invested with their office 
by the Emperor or the Pope. 

The decision of this question was complicated by the 
twofold position held by the bishops in the feudal 
system, which was then the universal system of gov- 
ernment throughout Europe. They were not merely 
spiritual pastors or overseers as they are now, fulfilling 
only the spiritual functions of their office, and hence 
owing obedience to the Pope as the head of the Church. 
They were, besides, usually great feudal lords, holding 
in right of their sees large landed estates under the 
same conditions as other feudal barons held theirs. 
Because these estates were inseparably annexed to their 
sees, it was necessary, according to the feudal theory, 
that they should be invested with them in the feudal 
form by the overlord or sovereign. Practically, the re- 
sult was that the bishops became the nominees of the 
king or the Emperor. This practice was regarded by 
Gregory and his successors as encroaching upon the 

rights of the Church, with whom, it was claimed, ought 

25 



290 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

to rest the exclusive power of appointing bishops. Much 
has been and may be said on both sides, of this question. 
If it be clear that the bishop, as responsible to the Pope 
for the performance of the purely spiritual or ecclesias- 
tical functions of his office, should be appointed by him, 
it was also natural that the kings and the Emperor should 
insist that those who had the use and revenue of one-half 
of the lands within their territories should not be any 
more independent of the jurisdiction of the lord para- 
mount than those who held the other half of those lands. 
It was impossible, according to the medi£eval concep- 
tion, to separate the office of bishop from the possession 
of the lands by which his see was endowed. Hence the 
quarrel of the Investitures, — the Popes claiming the 
power of the appointment of the bishops and the prac- 
tical control of the lands attached to the sees, and the 
Emperor and kings being unwilling to give up the 
patronage of the Church, or to abandon so potent a 
means of keeping the clergy serving in their territories 
within their control, as the feudal subjection of their 
lands. The investiture w^as so called from the feudal 
symbolical form of conferring an office. This form in 
the case of a bishop consisted of a gift to him, at the 
time he took possession of his see and swore allegiance 
to the civil authority, of a ring, which symbolized his 
marriage to the Church, of a staff or crosier, which de- 
noted his pastoral authority, and a touch of the sceptre, 
by which the territorial possessions of the see were sup- 
posed to be conferred on him. 



HENRY IV. EMPEROR. 291 

Henry IV. was Emperor of Germany at the time 
when this question assumed great practical importance 
owing to the efforts of Gregory to suppress simony and 
to enforce the celibacy of the clergy. These reforms 
which he had so much at heart could not, of course, be 
carried out as long as the power of the investiture of 
the bishops was in the hands of lay sovereigns. Henry, 
of the Franconian line, was a mere boy when he became 
Emperor. His early life was somewhat dissolute, and 
he had more than the common measure of trouble with 
his subjects, especially the turbulent nobles of Saxony. 
His power as Emperor in Germany for a long time 
was merely nominal, and doubtless during his reign the 
Pope took advantage of his weakness to assert boldly 
the pretensions of the Church within his German do- 
minions. At first Gregory (who from the beginning 
seems to have assumed the position of arbiter and dic- 
tator of the Imperial policy towards his subjects both 
in Church and in State) scolded the Emperor for the 
irregularities of his life very much as if he had been a 
naughty child. He next tried to induce him to give up 
siraoniacal practices in the appointment of bishops, and 
to degrade those who had obtained preferments in that 
way. Because the Emperor and the German prelates 
hesitated to act in this important matter rapidly enough 
to suit the impatient zeal of Gregory, he convoked a 
Council at Rome in the year 1075, in which he abro- 
gated by a decree the claim and practice of the investi- 
ture of the clei'gy of the endowments of their offices by 



292 MEDL-EVAL HISTORY. 

the sovereign whose subjects they were. By this decree 
those who gave and those who received such investiture, 
both the layman and the ecclesiastic, were equally de- 
posed from any authority hitherto attached to the offices 
they held. 

This decree made a revolution in the whole feudal 
system throughout Europe, as far as it affected the rela- 
tions of the possessors of Church lands to the State 
control. In the Empire it annulled the power of the 
Emperor over half his subjects who were landholders; 
and, indeed, if the theory had been fully carried out, 
the Pope must have become the temporal liege lord of 
half the world, as he was already the spiritual father of 
the whole of it. This decree was met by Henry by the 
act of a synod composed of German prelates deposing 
the Pope. Whereupon the Pope, of course, retaliated by 
deposing and excommunicating Henry. Such a sentence 
in those days had a terrible import. Henry, deserted 
by his followers as an excommunicate person, submitted, 
or feigned submission. He sought the Pope at the castle 
of Canossa, among the Apennines, and there, as I have 
related, in the garb of a penitent, abjuring the errors 
which the Pope had condemned, and promising amend- 
ment, he was admitted by the haughty Pontiff, after the 
most painful and degrading scene of humiliation, to his 
presence, and received absolution for his crime. But he 
soon afterwards found himself strong enough to scorn 
the Pope's mercy, and again set him at defiance, chased 
him from Rome and forced him to take refuge with 



CONCORDAT OF WORMS. 293 

the Normans, and was again excommunicated. The Pope 
in his extremity never yielded in the sliglitest degree his 
lofty pretensions. " No," said the brave old man, as he 
breathed his last at Salerno: '^ I have loved justice and 
hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile." 

But the quarrel did not die with him. It continued 
under successive Popes and successive Emperors with 
increasing bitterness, involving all the horror and con- 
fusion of civil war in Germany, a conflict in which 
the whole machinery of the higher Church discipline — 
deposition, excommunication, and interdict — was freely 
used for nearly fifty years. At last, in 1122, by the 
Concordat of Worms, as it was called, it was agreed 
between the Pope and the Emperor of that time that 
the clergy should be free to elect their bishop, but that 
the representative of the Emperor should be present at 
the election ; that the Pope might invest with the spirit- 
ual office under the symbol of the ring and the crosier, 
and that the Emperor should only invest the bishop 
elect with the possession of the estates attached to the 
see by a touch of the sceptre. This has the appearance 
of an indecisive battle; but practically, as subsequent 
history shows, the Pope was the victor. 

The pretensions of the Popes to authority over the 
sovereigns of Europe increased in extravagance until 
the close of the thirteenth century. They not only con- 
sidered it their duty to defend the rights of the Church, 
according to their theory of those rights, from encroach- 
ments by the civil power, but they claimed to be universal 

25* 



294 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

censo7^es moimm tliroughout Europe, using the discipline 
of the Churcli unsparingly to punish the greatest sover- 
eigns whom they judged guilty of offences against the 
Church. Nor did they claim jurisdiction only over 
offences such as these, but a new crime was discovered in 
the acts of the temporal sovereigns which was often re- 
garded as the most flagitious of all and one to be visited 
by the severest and swiftest punishment, — that of calling 
into question the papal jurisdiction over kings. 

For a long period, whenever the Pope or the sover- 
eign happened to be a man of strong will, this conflict 
between the papal authority and that of the lay rulers 
throughout Europe broke out afresh. Thus, we have 
the quarrels between Hadrian IV. and Frederick Bar- 
barossa about the Lombard cities and their respective 
claims to the kingdom of Naples ; the controversy be- 
tween Henry II. of England and Thomas Becket con- 
cerning the exemption of the clergy in England from 
the jurisdiction of the civil courts; the long struggle 
between Gregory IX. and the Emperor Frederick II., 
between Innocent III. and Philip Augustus of France, 
where the Pope appears in the grand part of the champion 
of the sanctity of marriage; the excommunication and 
deposition of John of England ; and, later, the ignoble 
strife between Boniface VIII. and Philip le Bel of 
France. Here is a strange jumble of subjects of quarrel 
arising between two persons because one claimed to ex- 
ercise the spiritual and the other the civil authority. In 
many of these controversies the Popes were not only 



CHURCH OPINION OF THE TIME. 295 

judges but law-givers also, creating the offence (which 
was too often an alleged denial of their power) which 
they undertook to try. In both cases they claimed 
supreme and absolute power, the exercise of which they 
insisted was essential to the maintenance of truth and 
justice in that wild age. The medicine might sometimes 
l)e harsh and bitter, as Innocent III. once said, but the 
disease was deep-rooted. . 

All tliese acts of the Popes seem now to us the 
strangest usurpations; but it is very clear that such was 
not the verdict of the Christian conscience as to most of 
them at the time they were done. It is worth consider- 
ing how the Pope enforced these extraordinary claims to 
authority which he made in an age when brute foFce 
alone compelled obedience to any other form of rule. 
He lacked not means which proved very effective. Pro- 
longed disobedience to the Pope's decrees by the civil 
rulers, which extended to almost every conceivable case 
of public scandal or of violation of the law of the 
Church, was uniformly punished in the last resort by 
those most terrible weapons of the ecclesiastical armory, 
excommunication, interdict, and deposition. To a pri- 
vate person excommunication in those days was a fearful 
reality, for it made him literally an outcast, not merely 
depriving him of those sacraments of the Church which 
formed the life-blood of the man of the medlseval age, 
but cutting him off also from all those relations with his 
fellows which social life was instituted chiefly to promote. 
In the case of kings and sovereigns, not only did they 



296 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

suffer the same privations as individuals, but their au- 
thority was taken away from them, their subjects were 
released from their obedience, and often some one, gen- 
erally a rival, considered by the Church as more worthy, 
was placed in their stead. Not only were these unfor- 
tunate sovereigns made to suffer as individuals and as 
kings, but what is technically called an interdict was 
laid upon their dominions, by which the Church and all 
its sacraments and ministrations, which formed, as I have 
said, the breath of life in the Middle Age, were for the 
time withdrawn from the people who had the misfortune 
to be the subjects of one who had disobeyed the Church. 
This penalty, in days when to speak of politics as simply 
a«matter of secular concern would have been regarded 
not merely as heresy but as an absurdity, seldom failed, 
when persistently applied, to tame the wildest and most 
lawless of those Teutonic warriors whose one weak point 
was the ease with which they were controlled by their 
superstitious terrors. We think of Henry IV. of Ger- 
many, of Henry II. of England, of Philip Augustus of 
France, of the Emperor Frederick II., and even of the 
English King John, as bold men ; but they were no match 
for the crowned priest who sat in St. Peter's chair, and 
they one and all submitted to his orders, so that their 
kingdoms might be relieved from an interdict and them- 
selves from excommunication. 

We may, I think, search history in vain to find any 
moral power which has had in the affairs of mankind 
a force equal to that of excommunication as it was 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 297 

employed against civil rulers during the Middle Age ; 
and, what seems very extraordinary, but what is per- 
haps the true explanation of the frequent use of this 
terrible punishment, its application seems to have been 
approved by the Christian opinion of the age. The 
authority of the Church was trusted both to define and 
to punish the offences of those who were supposed to 
be above the reach of the ordinary laws. While the 
validity of pretensions such as these was recognized, the 
claims of the Church to interference in the details of 
civil government were admitted on the same principle. 

The Canon or Church law recognized in everything 
the superiority of the ecclesiastical to the temporal au- 
thority. It insisted upon the exemption of the clergy 
from the jurisdiction of the civil courts; it permitted 
the Church authorities to dispense, for cause shown, with 
its own prohibitions in regard to marriages within cer- 
tain degrees of affinity, and with the obligations of the 
most sacred oaths; it permitted the Pope to give eccle- 
siastical preferments of value to non-residents, and to 
such an extent was this practice carried that in the time 
of Henry III. in England her Church estates seem to 
have been a free pasture for Italian priests; moreover, it 
taxed the clergy, who were exempt from State taxation, 
for the benefit of the court of Rome. This last abuse 
seems to have done more to raise a spirit of resistance to 
the papal power than any of its acts during the Middle 
Age. The clergy, with here and there a notable excep- 
tion, such as Stephen Langton and Robert Grosset^te in 



298 MEDIyEVAL HISTORY. 

England, looked on with calmness, if not with approba- 
tion, when they saw the authority of their own sovereigns 
defied by the Pope, but when they themselves were pil- 
laged under a claim of the same power they were disposed 
to regard .their own spiritual sovereign as an arbitrary 
oppressor. The wealth of the clergy — that is, of the 
higher dignitaries of the Church — and the corruption of 
the court of Rome were universally regarded at the close 
of the thirteenth century as grave abuses, and the indig- 
nation they excited found utterance first among the priests 
themselves, — Wyclif, Huss, and Jerome of Prague, — 
and amidst sectaries such as the Albigenses and the 
Cathari; and from them, and from men like them, came 
the mutterings of that storm which was to burst in its 
full force on the papacy in the sixteenth century. 

But for the present the power of the Popes was prac- 
tically unchecked. The pretensions of Boniface YIII., 
who was the last but one of the Popes who used his 
prerogative for the deposition of kings in the genuine 
mediaeval fashion, were more extravagant than those of 
any of his predecessors. He insisted not merely that 
he had a right to interfere with those acts of Philip le 
Bel which concerned the position of the clergy in France, 
but also that it was his business to compel Philip to re- 
form the government of France in all respects ; and for 
that purpose he actually summoned an assembly of the 
French bishops to meet at Rome to dictate to the king, 
under the inspiration of the t*ope, the policy he should 
pursue in the government of his own kingdom. He 



THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY. 299 



claimed that all persons, of whatever rank, should obey 
this summons, and for this reason : ^^ Such is our pleas- 
ure, who, by Divine permission, govern the world.*' It 
is hard to find anything to admire in the character 
of Philip le Bel ; but submission of his authority to a 
foreign potentate was not one of his many weaknesses. 
This extraordinary act of Boniface was met by the king 
by a convocation of the first States- General which ever 
met in France (1304), a body which denounced the 
Pope's pretensions and insisted upon what afterwards 
became a fundamental axiom of the Gallican Church 
down to the Kevolution, — the entire independence of 
the temporal power of the French kings of the spiritual 
power of the Pope. 

Shortly after the power and with it the pretensions of 
the papacy to a supreme and universal jurisdiction in 
temporal aifairs was completely broken by its transfer 
from Eome to Avignon (1305), where it was established 
for nearly seventy years, a period known in Church 
history as the Babylonian captivity. In that city it 
ceased, in the eyes of a very large part of Christendom, 
to possess that sacred cosmopolitan character which no 
doubt had had much to do with the veneration and 
respect with which its catholic authority had been re- 
garded. At Avignon the Popes were always French, 
the majority of the Cardinals were French, and the 
whole policy of the papacy was manifestly under French 
influence, while the rapacity of i\\^ Popes was even 
greater than it had been at Kome. The prestige of 



300 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

Rome once lost, the whole tone of the head of the 
Church changed. The abuses which had been com- 
plained of still remained ; but at least one great ob- 
stacle, a portentous one in the imagination of mankind, 
which had hitherto overshadowed all hope of reform, 
— the awful majesty of Rome, and what was due to it, 
— existed no longer. 

Besides, the foundation on which the undisputed su- 
premacy of the Pope rested, the visible organic catholic 
unity of the Church, was crumbling. That unity was 
threatened by what is known in ecclesiastical history as 
the great schism, which occurred in 1377, when one party 
of the Cardinals who had returned to Rome chose as 
Poi)e an Italian, who took the title of Urban YI., and 
another party, who were supposed to be in the French 
interest (on the plea that the election of Urban had been 
forced on the College of Cardinals by the Roman popu- 
lace), chose a Frenchman, who was called Clement VI. 
Urban established himself at Rome ; Clement, under the 
protection of the French king, at Avignon. Each had 
his strong partisans; neither would yield ; and hence the 
scandalous picture was presented of two Popes claiming 
an equal share in the indivisible authority of the head- 
ship of the Church. The Roman party elected three 
Pontiffs in succession to Urban, and the French, upon 
the death of Clement, elected in due form his successor. 
This schism rent the Church in twain, the Empire, 
England, and the nations of the North adhering to 
the Italian Pope, while France, Spain, Scotland, and 



COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE. 301 

Sicily persisted in recognizing the French one. This 
schism, of course, resulted in the weakening of the 
papacy, especially in its claims to supremacy over the 
civil power. 

The Councils which were held in order to heal the 
dissensions — those of Pisa, of Constance, and of Basle 
— took the opportunity not only of limiting the preten- 
sions of the papacy itself, but of urging the necessity, of 
the reform of many of the abuses by which it had be- 
come degraded, and which all parties at the time agreed 
in thinking had brought great scandal on the Church. 
The Council of Constance was composed not only of 
bishops, but of the chiefs of monasteries, of the ambas- 
sadors from many Christian princes, and of a multitude 
of doctors of law. Among other things, it decreed 
that this Council had, as a General Council, by Divine 
right an authority to which every rank, even the papal, 
must submit in matters of faith and in measures for the 
reform of the Church. There is, I believe, some doubt 
of the regularity of the decrees of the Council of Con- 
stance, or at least of their being universally binding on 
the Church, but there is no doubt whatever that its ses- 
sions formed an epoch since which the arrogant claims 
of the papacy to the control of the civil power as it had 
been exercised by so many of the mediaeval Popes were 
no longer made. . The thunder of excommunication was 
still often heard, but in faint mutterings, and it ceased 
to carry with it awe and terror as of old. Europe once 
more acknowledged a common Pope, but the power of 

26 



302 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

Gregory, of Innocent, and of Boniface was gone with 
the age in which they lived. 

A reaction in the policy of the principal sovereigns of 
Europe in regard to papal claims is very striking during 
the first half of the fourteenth century. The rulers of 
the world seem with common consent at last to have 
made up their minds not to degrade the papacy, but 
to confine its jurisdiction within reasonable bounds. I 
have already spoken of the attitude of France in the 
controversy between Philip le Bel and Boniface, when 
the National Assembly of the country, the States-Gen- 
eral, answered the appeal of their king by the declara- 
tion that the sovereign power of the monarch in France 
is such that none is above it save God alone. This was 
in 1302. A few years later, when Benedict XII. per- 
sisted in maintaining the excommunication which had 
been pronounced by his predecessor against Louis of 
Bavaria, the German Electoral Princes, three of whom 
were the foremost prelates of the country, did not hesi- 
tate to choose Louis Emperor notwithstanding this im- 
pediment, declaring that every election of Emperor was 
valid without the confirmation of the Pope. So in 
England, in the reign of Edward III., the intolerable 
exactions from which the people suffered, owing to the 
rapacity of the court of Rome, induced Parliament, as 
we have seen, to prohibit the admission or execution of 
papal briefs or bulls within the realm by the statute of 
jjrwmunire, and to deny the papal claim to dispose of 
ecclesiastical benefices by the statute o^ provisors. From 



THE POPES AS ITALIAN PRINCES. 303 

this time forward the Popes made no effort to maintain 
their universal dominion by the means which Gregory 
VII. and so many of his successors liad used. 

Their ambition, it is true, was still directed towards 
schemes of temporal sovereignty, but the sphere in 
which it was conspicuous was Italy, and not the uni- 
versal domain of Christendom. In that country they 
made the interests of the papacy subservient to the ele- 
vation of their kindred in rank and wealth. They were 
engaged, many of them, in all the intrigues of the 
profligate princes of Italy to secure the territorial rank 
of the members of their families in the bad age of the 
fifteenth century. The great scandal of the court of 
Rome in those days was the nepotism of the Popes. 
The awe and veneration which tlieir character had in- 
spired, even when they were most despotic in their 
schemes for exalting the authority of the Church, grad- 
ually faded out of men's minds when they found their 
policy guided by anxiety about Italian politics, and 
when they could so degrade their office as to engage 
in a vulgar strife in that country with men like the 
Visconti and the Sforzas and the Aragonese kings of 
the two Sicilies. 

The personal character of most of the Popes in the 
fifteenth century further degraded the great office they 
held. Sixtus IV. and Alexander VI. (Borgia) are men 
in whom we seek in vain for any of the priestly virtues 
or any of the priestly courage of the earlier Popes. So 
sunken had the power of the papacy become before the 



304 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

close of the fifteenth century that when Charles VIII. 
of France undertook his expedition against Naples in 
1494 he paid no heed to the alliance which the Pope 
had made with his enemy the king of that country, but 
marched through Italy straight to the gates of Rome. 
He forced the Pope, whom he found in abject terror at 
his approach, not only to abandon an alliance with his 
enemies, but to recognize his claims as heir to the Duke 
of Anjou, and to give him feudal investiture of the 
kingdom of Naples, the suzerainty of which the Popes 
had long held. It is true that this Pope was a Borgia; 
but an act like this shows the decline not merely of the 
character but of the power of the great mediaeval Popes. 
It must not be thought that because the Popes declined 
in public estimation the Church in the same way lost its 
vigor. No bad examples and no worthless lives of individ- 
ual Popes could root out the beliefs which had been grow- 
ing in the mind of Europe for more than a thousand years. 
The perpetuity of the Church, notwithstanding the un- 
worthiness of so many of its supreme Pontiffs, has often 
been spoken of as a striking evidence of its Divine origin. 
The sacredness of the priest was inalienable, indelible, 
altogether irrespective of his life, his habits, his personal 
holiness or unholiness. There might be secret murmurs 
at the avarice, pride, licentiousness of the priest ; public 
opinion might even in some cases boldly hold him up to 
shame and obloquy ; still, he was priest, bishop. Pope ; 
his sacraments lost none of their efficacy, and his verdict 
of condemnation or of absolution was equally valid. 



CHAPTEE XL 

THE STRUGGLE FOR ITALIAN NATIONALITY. 

The growth of a strong sentiment of nationality was 
one of the most important consequences of the conflict 
of social forces during the Middle Age. As the result 
of this evolution is one of the most original and charac- 
teristic features of our modern life, the process calls for 
careful study. It seems, at first sight, strange that from 
feudalism, an epoch which we are accustomed to regard 
as one essentially marked by local and separatist tenden- 
cies and possessing none of that power of cohesion which 
is essential to our ideal of a national life, the outgrowth 
should be an opposite condition of society, in which 
monarchy, centralization, and an intensely national spirit 
became the dominant principles. The contrast between 
the two eras in this respect is very striking, and the 
change is due to the gradual silent influence of common 
ideas germinating in its soil, weakening, as the Middle 
Age grew older, the foundations, and gradually crum- 
bling away the external forms which suited the time, 
and substituting for them those better expressing the 
changed condition of feeling. We have spoken of some 
of those influences in describing the course of mediaeval 
life in the principal countries of Europe. They all had 

at least this general tendency, that they bred discontent 

26* 305 



306 MEDIuEVAL HISTORY. 

and taught the people throughout Western Europe some 
common lessons concerning the improvement of their 
condition. To them any form of government was pref- 
erable to feudalism. Local self-government, as estab- 
lished in the free cities, was only a partial remedy. The 
kings and the free towns united to check the power of 
the feudal nobles; and from this strange combination 
has been developed a strong sentiment of nationality 
founded upon affinities of race and neighborhood. 

This sentiment as it grew stronger not only destroyed 
feudalism, but it has become one of the most energetic 
forces in the government of the world. Do not let us 
mistake the meaning of this sentiment of nationality, 
lest we should be unable to explain the cause of its pro- 
digious power. It does not mean that a mere aggrega- 
tion of great numbers of human beings in a large district 
necessarily promotes the improvement of the race, or 
that such has ever been the belief of any portion of it. 
Such mere crowding together was the case in Babylon 
and in other populous districts in the East in antiquity. 
Vast multitudes were there enclosed, so to speak, in 
huge pens; but they were only like dumb cattle driven, 
and the more easily driven because they formed an un- 
organized mass. But the true sentiment of nationality 
is an ineradicable, vital, organic force, almost crushed 
out by the necessities of the Roman Imperial system 
and feudal rule, but reappearing in our modern life with 
such power that to us all that is best in life and civili- 
zation is inconceivable unless the means of preserving 



THE SENTIMENT OF NA TIONALITY. 307 

both are found in the nation. It has nothing to do, and 
is often in direct conflict, with that love of conquest 
which has stirred men* like Charlemagne and Louis 
XIV. and Napoleon to annex countries of different 
races and civilizations to their own. When, however, 
such men fight for the influence of the race to which 
they belong, and to extend the power of the nation as 
representing that race, they are its true representatives : 
their conquests stir the passions of their people, and they 
are supported by their strength. 

Modern history is so full of illustrations of the work- 
ing of this principle that it seems almost a political in- 
stinct. Ever since the germs of the three great nations 
of modern Europe — France, Germany, and Italy — were 
planted by the treaty of Yerdun, in 843, on the division 
of Charlemagne's dominions among his descendants, 
the tendency towards the consolidation of each of these 
three countries into separate and strong nationalities has 
been, notwithstanding the intensely unnational charac- 
ter of feudalism, incessantly active, so that it may be 
regarded as a powerful agent in European politics for 
more than a thousand years. In each of these coun- 
tries the sentiment has dictated their policy, internal 
and external, and, whatever else has changed in them, 
it has proved a force in government always ineradicable, 
persistent, and aggressive. Through countless struggles 
the instinct of nationality in each has forced its way and 
gained at last its triumph. The nationality of France 
was established on a solid basis in the time of Louis 



308 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY, 

XIV., which has never been since shaken, notwith- 
standing all the changes in the form of its government. 
Germany and Italy have each -become a nation in our 
own day. Germany was proclaimed a true Empire 
of people of German race and speech (very unlike the 
Holy Roman Empire) in 1871, after her marvellous 
conquests in France, in that very hall of the palace at 
Versailles the walls of Avhich are covered with pictures 
representing the triumph of the French race over the 
German. Italy became a nation in any true sense since 
the downfall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, 
when Victor Emmanuel, in our own day, brought its 
various provinces under his sway and ruled from Rome 
what was truly Italy, — that is, a country extending from 
tJie Alps to the Adriatic. 

I propose to speak of the history of Italy w^ith refer- 
ence to this unity and nationality which have so recently 
become Jaits accompUs. I must try to show that this 
sentiment of nationality was really at all times the 
ruling idea of the best minds of all parties in that 
country, as in other countries of Europe, and to explain 
the formidable nature of the obstacles which prevented 
that idea from becoming a practical reality in the form 
of a national government until our own time. The real 
history of Italy I suppose to be an account of her ter- 
rible struggle to reach such a national unity ever since 
the fall of the Western Empire. Her kingdom is the 
last-born of modern States, but the history of her early 
and persistent struggles to found it is most interesting 



ITALY THE PREY OF THE SPOILER. 309 

and instructive. When we think of it, we recall the 
famous lines of Lord Byron, modelled upon a verse of 
one of her own poets : 

" Italia ! Italia ! thou wlio liast 
The fatal gift of beauty, which became 
A funeral dower of present woes and past, 
On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame. 
And annals graved in characters of flame." 

In these lines there is a striking image of the true 
history of Italy. Her beauty attracted strangers, and 
they fought for. her possession. It was not merely that 
she had to struggle against those invaders who sought 
to despoil her. Alas ! she was forced too often, in her 
weakness, to look as a mere spectator upon the wars 
between the rudest barbarians on her own soil, in which 
her only interest was to know to which of the comba- 
tants she would fall as the prize. As she was the most 
tempting of all the provinces of the Empire, so she be- 
came the earliest prey of the barbarians, and suffered 
perhaps more and for a longer period than any other 
from their unchecked domination. During a period of 
about five hundred years, beginning a.d. 396, the Visi- 
goths, the Burgundians, the Vandals, the Huns, the 
Ostrogoths, the Franks, the Lombards, the Normans, 
and the Saracens occupied in turn large portions of 
her territory, and ruled the remnant of the popula- 
tion which Roman wars and Roman maladministration 
had left in Italy by the same brute force which the 



310 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

forefathers of these Italians had employed towards those 
tribes on the frontiers of the Empire, whose children had 
now come to avenge their old wrongs. 

In telling this sad story of desolation and suffering 
it is hard to know where, within the limits of a single 
chapter, to begin. The Lombard invasion, which took 
place about the close of the sixth century, was perhaps the 
most formidable and the most permanent in its influence 
of all the barbarian inroads. The Lombard domination 
lasted in Italy for more than two hundred years, and 
under it was established there that feudal system which 
the invaders brought from Germany, and which their 
Teutonic fellow-countrymen adopted later in all those 
portions of Europe which formed the Empire of Charle- 
magne. After the invasion, and during the occupa- 
tion by the Lombards, Italy was divided into three 
distinct portions, each governed by a separate power. 
The Lombards were supreme in the north and in the 
country west of the Apennines, holding, besides, the 
important duchies of Spoleto in the middle and Bene- 
ventum in the south. The Roman Empire, or rather 
that shadow of its great name which was to be found 
at Constantinople, ruled the country on the shores of the 
Adriatic, a district which was called, in official language, 
the Exarchate of Ravenna, and the Popes were really 
the controlling power in the Duchy of Rome, although 
nominally they were subject to the Emperors at Con- 
stantinople. Besides these, there was a number of mar- 
itime cities, even then rising into importance by their 



THE POPE AND THE LOMBARDS. 311 

commerce, such as Venice, Gaeta, Naples, and Amalfi, 
which, being out of the reach of the Lombards, were 
practically independent and self-governing. 

By the Lombards Italy was regarded for a long time 
as the spoil of war only. By the conquest two-thirds of 
the lands of the population had been transferred ta the 
invaders, and the other third, owing to cruel and bad 
government, was rendered almost unproductive. The 
timid representative of the Emperor at Constantinople 
abandoned all attempt to succor the populations which 
were at least nominally subject to his master, and shut 
himself up in Ravenna, protected from attack by the 
morasses which surrounded it. The only living and real 
authority recognized by any was the moral one, — that of 
the Church. It was the moral, not the officially recog- 
nized, authority of the Church which could say to a 
people ground down by the exactions of both Greeks 
and Lombards, " Come to us if you have any dispute 
the decision of which you are afraid to trust to the bar- 
barians, and we will try and settle it on principles of 
equity. If you complain that you cannot trade for fear 
of the pillage of the lords, come again to us, and here, 
even in the sacred precincts of the convent, you shall 
buy and sell freely under the Church's protection. You 
com])lain that these lords pursue you often with mur- 
derous intent. If so, come to us, and we will open for 
your refuge the churches, and there you shall be safe 
from their fury.'' 

We soon see how strong this power of the Church 



312 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

became in these troublous times. In the middle of the 
eighth century, the Pope, finding his position an embar- 
rassing, not to say an impossible, one between a Greek 
Emperor who threatened to destroy all the images used in 
the churches in Italy, and a Lombard king who threat- 
ened to capture Rome, applied first to Charles Martel, 
and afterwards to Pepin, his son, Kings of the Franks, 
for succor. The result was such as I have described 
more than once in previous chapters. The Lombards 
and the Greeks were defeated by the Franks, the Ex- 
archate was conferred upon the Pope, and this donntion, 
and not that of Constantine (falsely so called), was the 
basis of the temporal power of the Popes as recognized 
by the public law of Europe. The work of the Prank- 
ish conquerors was completed in the next reign, that of 
Charlemagne, who extinguished both the Greek and the 
Lombard dominion in Italy, and became, at Christ- 
mas, 800, by his alliance with the Pope, not only Em- 
peror of the world, but King of Italy also. From 
that day until 1870, when Victor Emmanuel was pro- 
claimed, at Rome, King of Italy, and as a result of the 
work done on that Christmas day, Italy was ruled by 
foreigners, or the policy of her different princes was 
dictated by foreign influence. Her history, as I have 
said before, is the history of a never-ceasing, and, for 
many centuries, a vain, struggle to rid herself of them. 
As kings of Italy the successors of Charlemagne were 
the feudal overlords of the country ; and the harshness 
of their rule was to a certain extent modified by their 



CASTLES AND CITY WALLS BUILT. 313 

alliance with the Church, while as Emperors they did 
not hesitate from time to time to purify the Church by 
preventing the chair of St. Peter from being desecrated 
by unworthy persons who sought to occupy it. The 
germs of the feudal system, which had been planted in 
Italy by the Lombards, were fully developed by the 
Franks. Vast tracts of territory were granted to the 
principal warriors among the nobles, who had an abso- 
lute authority over the inhabitants of the lands which 
were held of them. 

The country, and especially strong military positions 
tliroughout it, was covered with castles, and they be- 
came posts of defence for these lords against their neigh- 
bors. In the previous invasions of the barbarians the 
walls of the towns had been levelled, but now the towns 
were permitted by their lords to rebuild them, because 
they were needed for their defence against the Normans, 
the Avars, and the Saracens, who from time to time for 
more than three centuries made fierce inroads into this 
unhappy country. This rebuilding of the walls of the 
towns forms an epoch in the history of the country, 
for it enabled the cities afterwards to combine and resist 
the arbitrary authority not only of the neighboring lords, 
but also of their German masters. The successors of 
Cliarlemagne, of all the three dynasties, always insisted 
upon their feudal suzerainty, and, what was of more 
practical importance, upon the feudal tribute due them 
as kings of Italy. During eighty years, from 960 to 
1040, the German kings of Italy entered that country 

27 



314 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

twelve times at tlie head of large armies. They encamped 
on the celebrated plain of Roncaglia near Placentia, and 
there held meetings of their Italian feudatories, similar 
to the Cliamj)s de Mai which they were accustomed to 
hold in Germany, and proclaimed laws for the gov- 
ernment of the country, receiving the homage of their 
vassals, and collecting the tribute payable to them as a 
feudal due. As the chief object of the Emperors on these 
expeditions was to secure the money payments due from 
their vassals, they troubled themselves very little, if these 
were promptly made, with any claim to local authority 
which their vassals, nobles or cities, might set up. 

In the long absences of their German masters the 
to\vns in Lombardy, especially Milan, Pavia, Cremona, 
Brescia, Padua, and Mantua, had established in each a 
local self-governing body, and they were all, at least in 
the beginning, bound by an alliance to defend the privi- 
leges which each claimed as against the Emperor. This 
Lombard League, as it was called, had become so pow- 
erful that it defied the authority of the Emperor, Fred- 
erick Barbarossa, even when its two principal members, 
Milan and Pavia, were contending for the leadership of 
the League. Frederick, for the sake of vindicating his 
own feudal rights as well as those of the great vassals 
of Lombardy who were too feeble from their want of 
organization to resist the demands of the towns, deter- 
mined to destroy this Lombard League. Milan suffered 
wdth her allies from his fury during three campaigns, 
and at last, when that illustrious city was taken (1162), 



THE LOMBARD LEAGUE. 315 

not only its walls but all its buildings were, by order 
of the conqueror, razed to the ground. But the heroic 
example of Milan stimulated the resistance of the other 
Lombard cities, and, although the Emperor strove to 
overcome it for many years, he at last failed. Tlie 
decisive battle (which in its results is one of the most 
important in history) was that of Legnano in 1176, in 
which the Germans and their Italian allies were wholly 
defeated by the army of the Lombard League, and this 
battle was followed by the peace of Constance, in which 
the Emperor renounced all the regal authority he had 
claimed within the cities, acknowledging their right to 
levy armies, and to build fortifications, and to administer 
the law as they saw proper within their own jurisdiction. 
On the other hand, they agreed to pay him two thousand 
marks in silver for the purchase of certain of his feudal 
claims, he retaining a nominal sovereignty over them. 
" Thus was terminated/^ says Sismondi, " the first and 
most noble struggle ever maintained by the nations 
of modern Europe against despotism." Their position 
legally, after the peace of Constance, was that of sub- 
jects of a limited instead of an absolute monarchy. 

Two things are specially to be noted in this conflict: 
first, that the Pope, Alexander III., against whom the 
Emperor had set up an antipope, sided with the insur- 
gents. The fortress built by the Lombard League as 
the most eflPectual barrier to the advance of Frederick in 
Italy was that of Alexandria, so called after the Pope, 
tlius honorably identifying the papacy with this first 



316 MEDIJEVAL HISTORY. 

struggle for Italian independence. Then, again, during 
these wars the party names of Guelph and Ghibeline 
first became used in Italy, although originally they had 
nothing Italian about them. The Guelphs in Germany 
were originally the partisans of the houses of Saxony 
and Bavaria. In Italy the friends of the Pope and of 
Italian independence assumed that name. The Ghibe- 
lines in Germany were the friends of the house of Swabia, 
or HohenstaufPen, to which the Emperor Frederick be- 
longed, but in Italy all who favored Imperial rights and 
pretensions in that country were called Ghibelines. 

The efforts of the house of Hohenstauffen to main- 
tain its authority in Italy did not end, unfortunately, 
at the peace of Constance. At the death of Frederick 
Barbarossa, his grandson, Frederick II., inherited from 
his mother Constance, the heiress of the last Norman 
king of Sicily, all the possessions of that house, which 
included not only the island of Sicily, but that portion 
of Southern Italy known in modern times as the king- 
dom of Naples. On his father's side he was heir of the 
vast domain of the Hohenstauffens, in Germany, and, 
besides, he was elected by the German Diet Emperor. 
No Emperor since Charlemagne's time had had such 
vast hereditary possessions. Being thus Emperor and 
King of Naples and Sicily, it was plain that the tem- 
poral authority of the Popes, wdio had long been regarded 
as the lie<2;e lords of the Norman kin2:s of the two Sici- 
lies, would become endangered. The Pope, it seemed 
probable, would be reduced by the attitude of Frederick 



GUELPHS AND GHIBELINES. 317 

in Italy to the position of a spiritual ruler only. We 
may easily conceive that Innocent III., who was on the 
pontifical throne when Frederick of Sicily reached man- 
hood, was very unwilling that the vast designs which 
subsequent events prove he was then meditating for tlie 
advancement of the papacy should fail for want of power 
in the head of the Church. It must be remembered 
too that in the opinion of the Italian Guelphs the Pope 
^vas as naturally and properly the head of their party 
as he w^as the head of the Church. It was this senti- 
ment mainly, I think, w^iich gave rise to the second 
attempt of the Italians to drive the Germans out of 
their country. It seems an echo from the distant past 
of the famous war-cry of our own times, — ^^ Italia farci 
da se/^ This time it was the independence of tlie Pope, 
not as the spiritual father, but as an Italian prince, 
which was menaced, and it was maintained by the towns, 
or many of them, as previously the claim had been the 
independence of these towns themselves, which was sup- 
ported by all the power of the Pope. 

Frederick II. was the most modern of mediaeval sov- 
ereiojns broug-ht into collision with the most mediaeval 
of all Popes, Innocent III. and Gregory IX. While he 
was asserting his rights in Italy against the claims of the 
Pope, he treated him as the head of a Guelphic league, 
the object of which was to increase his temporal power in 
Italy at the expense of that of the Emperor, just as he 
would have treated any hostile sovereign in arms against 

him. Frederick II. is, next to Charlemagne, the most 

27* 



318 MEDIEVAL HISTORY, 

attractive and interesting figure among all the Emperors. 
So far as culture was concerned, his reign opened a new 
era in Italy. It was at his court at Palermo that the 
Italian language assumed its definitive form. Inspired 
doubtless by the example of the Saracens, his predeces- 
sors there, he founded schools and universities ; he en- 
couraged men distinguished for their learning; he spoke 
with facility six different languages; he had that delicacy 
of taste characteristic of the scholars of Southern Eu- 
rope ; he was fond of philosophical studies, which prob- 
ably led him to doubt concerning the sacredness of the 
Church and the sanctity of the Popes of those days. 
But he was unable, after a struggle of thirty years, to 
overcome the Popes, supported by their spiritual power, 
and aided by the strength of the Guelphic cities of 
Italy, and he died in 1250, having vainly striven to 
expiate his sins against the Church by engaging in a 
Crusade. He left the cities of Italy such as his grand- 
father had made them by the peace of Constance, a 
multitude of petty independent republics, each with the 
seed of dissolution planted within it by the rivalries of 
the factions of the Guelphs and Ghibelines. From his 
death German Emperors ceased to rule in Italy as the 
predecessors of Frederick Barbarossa had done. The 
posterity of Frederick II. met with the most determined 
hostility on the part of the Popes in their hereditary 
dominion of the two Sicilies, and the house of Hohen- 
stauffeu, ceasing to reign either in Germany or in Italy^ 
became shortly afterwards extinct. 



THE CITY REPUBLICS. 319 

Thus, so far as national unity was concerned, Italy 
was in a more hopeless condition after the last heir of 
the house of Hohenstauffen was publicly executed at 
Naples in 1268 than she had been since the fall of the 
Western Empire in 476. The power within her limits 
which was not wielded by the Pope as the head of the 
Guelphic cities and as administrator of the kingdom 
of the two Sicilies was held either by a vast number 
of towns, each forming a petty sovereign republic, or 
by nobles, who possessed the strongest castles and the 
largest estates in the open country. 

The history of the next two centuries in Italy is 
the history of the downfall of these petty republics, 
and their transformation into hereditary principalities 
which became vested in the most considerable of these 
families, such as those of Visconti and Sforza at Milan, 
Malatesta at Rimini, Gonzaga at Mantua, Este at Fer- 
rara, Medici at Florence, Doria at Genoa, La Scala 
at Verona, etc. There are said to have been nearly 
two hundred of these city republics in Italy at the close 
of the thirteenth century. Their form of government, 
if we except that at Venice, was substantially the 
same. They were governed by councils, — or signoria, 
as'they were called in Floi'ence, — composed of persons 
who were elected in these, as in all the free cities 
throughout Europe, by the burghers, properly so called. 
Their citizenship was an hereditary right, derived from 
those by whom it had been first acquired. In many of 
these cities the ancient nobility found a place. What 



320 MEDL^VAL HISTORY. 

genuine oligarchies these cities really became may be 
judged from the statement that in Florence and in 
Venice there were about five thousand burghers in a 
population of one hundred thousand ; and this was about 
the proportion Avhicli was maintained in the other cities. 
The mass of the population, therefore, had nothing to 
do with the government of the city : representation in our 
modern sense of all classes being unknown, the avowed 
object was to establish within the city an aristocracy in 
its primitive sense, — the government of the best. 

Among these various city republics, large and small, 
scattered over Italy, there was, moreover, no confedera- 
tion, although leagues for making war against a common 
enemy were not unusual. The master-feeling in all of 
them was pride in their own independence and jealousy of 
their neighbors. Tliere was a perpetual desire of usurp- 
ing the rights of these neighbors, and of extending their 
power over those cities which were weaker than them- 
selves. These cities became the hotbeds of the political 
intrigues and ambition of certain families among tiie 
burghers who aspired to control their policy. There was 
perpetual tumult and fighting between rival factions. 
No injustice or cruelty or crime was regarded as for- 
bidden, if by committing such acts the objects of the 
crafty politician might be gained. Wholesale confis- 
cations, and the exile of all the principal members of 
the unsuccessful party, were measures commonly resorted 
to. The history of all the so-called republic cities of 
Italy, from that of Florence down through that of 



MATERIAL PROSPERITY UNDER THEM. 321 

Pisa, Genoa, and Milan, to the smallest of them, is a 
history of the selfish struggles of the leaders in each to 
gain the supremacy. If we looked only upon this side 
of the history of these republics, we should be inclined 
to think that they w^ere cursed with the worst govern- 
ment known to civilized man, far worse than even the 
arbitrary despotism of feudalism, because in Italy the 
tyrants of the cities and their policy Avere constantly 
changing. And yet we are obliged to say that this very 
period was the era of unsurpassed prosperity in these 
tov/ns, notwithstanding the disorder caused by the con- 
stant strife of factions within them. 

At no period was party spirit more violent than 
during the thirteenth century; yet at that very time 
the prosperity not only of the towns themselves, but 
of the districts outside of them but under their govern- 
ment, is said to have been prodigious and in striking 
contrast with the condition of the rest of Europe, where 
nothing but poverty and barbarism was to be found. 
To this period belongs the great work of irrigating the 
plains of Lombardy by canals, undertaken at the ex- 
pense of the city of Milan; and this, with certain im- 
provements introduced about the same time in Tuscany, 
marks the first traces of scientific agriculture, except the 
Avorks of the Saracens in the south of Spain, to be 
found in Europe. This, too, was the era of the con- 
struction of the great architectural works in the towns, 
which even now excite w^onder and admiration. Not 
only the great palaces and churches by which Florence 



322 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

is distinguished were then built, but town-halls, bridges, 
aqueducts, and other works of public utility there and 
elsewhere throughout Italy. The nobles and wealthy 
burghers lived in houses conspicuous for their beauty, 
elegance, and comfort,, while the kings of the North 
still dwelt in rude castles, where everything was sacri- 
ficed to making them places of defence. The inhab- 
itant of Paris wandered helplessly about his town 
tln-ough narrow passages filled with mud and filth long 
after the citizen of Florence was provided with broad 
and well-paved streets. The fine arts and literature 
were not neglected, although the period of the later 
Renaissance was yet one hundred and fifty years dis- 
tant. The celebrated bronze gates of the Baptistery at 
Florence were cast at a time when the government of 
tliat city was fiercely disputed by rival factions; and in 
the same era Cimabue and Giotto revived the art of 
painting, and Dante wrote Xa D'lmna Coinmedia. 

The vast wealth of which such a civilization was the 
outgrowth was due partly to habits of industry, which 
met with a rich reward, and partly to the vast and prof- 
itable commerce which was carried on by the maritime 
republics, Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Florence, with the 
East. These towns became the entrepots of the movable 
wealth of Europe. To them came all the merchants 
of the North and West, who supplied the wants of the 
people of those regions in all that ministered to a taste 
for luxury and refinement. The Genoans and Pisans 
established trading-posts at numerous places on the Black 



MUNICIPAL PRIDE. 323 

Sea ; and the most important islands in the Archipelago 
belonged to the Venetians. Small as tliese republics 
were, their wealth and commerce gave them the position 
of most important ruling powers in Europe during the 
Middle Age. With our modern notions that prosperity is 
inseparably connected with an honest, ust, and firm rule, 
we find it difficult to explain this strange spectacle which 
the history of the Italian city republics presents of bad 
government united with apparent prosperity. We must 
remember, however, that there was one sentiment com- 
mon to all the rival factions within them, and that was 
an intense pride in the greatness and supremacy of their 
own particular town, and an earnest determination to 
maintain it. The large spirit of national patriotism was 
hardly felt in Italy during the Middle Age, as it had 
not been even among the most enlightened nations of 
antiquity. Its place was supplied by an intense mu- 
nicipal feeling, the product of a narrow local sentiment 
which the natural and political divisions of the country 
often stimulated to a degree fatal to good government, 
to peace, and even to honor. They used to say at Ven- 
ice, Venetians first. Christians afterwards, and then, 
last of all, Italians; and such Avas substantially the 
feeling at Milan, Genoa, Pisa, and Florence. While 
every ambitious man within them strove to raise him- 
self to power, all struggled to maintain the supremacy 
of their town without its walls, and to promote the 
glory of its civilization within them. No civilization 
in modern times has anything like the brilliancy of that 



324 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

of these Italian towns during at least two centuries, 
but we may say now, Avitli confidence, that because it 
had no root in the eternal truths of right and justice, 
it withered away. 

These republics all, with the exception of Venice, 
perished and became principalities, the heritage of one 
of the great families dwelling within tjiem and who had 
been intrusted with their defence, from two causes : first, 
the necessity of confiding to professional military leaders 
and to mercenary soldiers the force which was intended 
for the protection of \\\q town against rival factions within 
it, and for making expeditions against its neighbors; 
and, secondly, the absolute control which the force so 
constituted soon exercised over the city. Of course, with 
such an army there was but one step from being its 
leader to becoming the ruler of the State. 

Whatever the Italian republics had gained during 
their era of prosperity, it is clear that they had not 
learned how to resist successfully their own domestic 
tyrants. These tyrants, as they are called in the Greek 
sense that they gained power by illegal means, were so 
numerous that with reference to the methods which they 
took to raise themselves to power on the ruins of these 
republics they have been classified into six varieties. 
But they were all alike usurpers and betrayers of the 
trust confided to them. They were usually foreign 
knights, and the title given to them was that of Podestci. 
These men so called to this office, whetlier they were 
great feudal lords or vicars of the Empire, or captains 



MODERN ITALIAN NOBILITY. 325 

of the people so called, or leaders of the condottlef-i, or 
nephews of Popes, or merely eminent burghers like the 
Medici, all abused the unlimited powers intrusted to 
them, and sought to establish family dynasties on the 
ruins of these republics. 

Such is the origin of all the great noble fiimilies of 
modern Italy. Their j^olicy for more than two centuries 
was not unlike that of the republics they destroyed, — 
viz., to add to their own possessions at the expense of 
their weaker neighbors. But, the republics once gone, 
civic pride and civic prosperity went with them, and his- 
tory does not present an example in Europe of the rapid 
degeneracy of a people as striking as that presented by 
Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries under the 
government of the family dynasties founded by these 
tyrants. The first care of each usurper was to disarm 
the citizens, who, long accustomed to the pursuits of 
trade, were in truth not usually inclined to serious re- 
sistance, and to supply their places with a force of heavy 
cavalry, chiefly composed of Germans, who it was sup- 
posed, being ignorant of the language of the towns in 
which they were stationed, besides being mere profes- 
sional soldiers, would be faithful to their chiefs. But 
these rude warriors soon found out that it would be 
easier for them to plunder for themselves than to divide 
the spoil with a master. They formed themselves into 
comjianies under the command of condottierij or hired 
captains, and offered their services to those who would 

})ay the highest price for them, with perfect indifference 

28 



326 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

as to the party or the cause for which tliey were fight- 
ing. Thus, in 1343, a rovang troop of these adventu- 
rers, calling themselves " The Great Company," under 
the command of a German, Count Werner, was organ- 
ized in Lombardy, with the following significant motto 
graven on their corselets : " Enemy of God, of Pity, and 
of Mercy." These banditti, instead of being extiri)ated 
by those whom they threatened to plunder, became the 
most useful auxiliaries employed by the allied princes of 
Lombardy against the Visconti of Milan. Their trade 
proved so profitable that companies of conc?of^i€ri -made 
up exclusively of Italians were afterwards formed, thus 
making their own countrymen their prey. For more 
than twenty years all the wars in Italy were carried on 
by these robbers, who divided themselves into distinct 
bands with the purpose of giving employment in the 
various quarrels which arose among the different princes 
to all members of the profession. To this practice of 
enlisting mercenary troops, which was continued on a 
large scale for a hundred and fifty years, the great 
Machiavelli attributes the conquest of Italy by foreigners 
during the sixteenth century. A native military force 
and organization based on the national principles which 
gave strength to the invading armies was until recent 
times unknown in Italy. 

As the time approached when the control of that 
country was to be fought for by the great powers, — 
EA'ance, Germany, and Spain, — the Italian princes were 
becoming gradually weaker, owing to their expending 



THE IDEAL ITALIAN PRINCE. 327 

their force in constant quarrels among themselves. 
Many of them were men of distinguished character 
and ability, who, had they pursued any other course 
than that of maintaining themselves and their families 
in power by destroying the life of their own country, 
would have left a great name in history. 

The ideal Italian prince, the legitimate successor of the 
condottieri, seems such a monster, as he is portrayed in 
the pages of Machiavelli, that his book II Principe was 
long looked upon as a romance, and the typical prince he 
describes as an impossible being. Further and modern 
researches have shown, however, that his pictures were 
genuine portraits of men he had known and served. 
It is true that the particular model who sat for the 
portrait of the Italian prince was Caesar Borgia, a 
man steeped in every vice which can deform or corrupt 
the human heart. History, unfortunately, teaches us the 
sad truth that a man may have been as depraved as 
Machiavelli has described Borgia and yet have been an 
accomplished Italian prince in the fifteenth century. 
He needed, for instance, no principle of morality, al- 
though he must be religious, with the understanding that 
religion then meant mere conformity to the order of the 
Church, and that it was entirely divorced from the re- 
straint of morality. A country, large or small, in the 
possession of a prince, was merely so much capital in his 
hands, and his business was with that capital to make the 
most out of it he could for his own personal advantage. 
Machiavclli's views as to the best method of subjugating 



328 MEDL^VAL HISTORY. 

free cities — the practical business question of his clay — ■ 
seem only a faithful reproduction of the course pursued 
by these tyrants in the destruction of the Italian re- 
publics. He sums up his views of government with 
this wise apothegm, the fruit of his long and bitter 
experience : It is safer for a ruler to he, feared than to 
be loved. " Put no faith in tlie pretended love of men/' 
he says. "When it is their interest they will serve you, 
and when you count on their gratitude they will desert 
you. If you wish to succeed, keep no faith when it 
is harmful to do so : it is not necessary that a prince 
should be merciful, loyal, humane, religious, just; on the 
contrary, an exhibition of these qualities will usually be 
harmful, but" (and here is that homage which, happily, 
by the very constitution of the human heart. Virtue 
always forces Vice to pay her) " the prince must always 
seem to have them." 

The value of these opinions of Machiavelli for us 
consists in this, that they give us the true explanation 
of the motives which produced those acts of cruelty, 
tyranny, and force, and that life of utter self-indulgence, 
depravity, and corruption, which characterize the era of 
the rule of the Italian princes in the fourteenth and fif- 
teenth centuries. We must keep our eyes steadily fixed 
on this condition as the source of all the evils that over- 
whelmed the Italian people during this epoch. We 
are sometimes, I think, in danger of misconceiving the 
true character of this time. Italy, in the age of these 
tyrants, was a country of strange contrasts. With all the 



TYRANNY AND CULTURE COMBINED, 329 

frightful horrors of a despotism carried out on the prin- 
ciples which I have just described are found in close 
juxtaposition so many traces of a brilliant culture, and 
one so much in advance of any other in Europe at that 
time, that we naturally incline to dwell rather on the 
bright than on the dark side of the picture. These 
tyrants were nearly all munificent patrons of learning 
and of the fine arts ; and it is this, I doubt not, which 
has saved them from being ranked in history with such 
monsters as Tiberius and Nero and Caligula. When 
we think of the Yisconti of Milan, the building of the 
famous cathedral in that city, of the Certosa at Pavia, 
and the restoration of the university, works which were 
all due to that family, make us forget for the moment 
that its members were a brood of ferocious tyrants, 
who, not content with usurping the government of the 
free towns of Lombardy, aspired to bring all Italy under 
their cruel sway. When we speak of another of these 
tyrants, Malatesta of Rimini, we remember rather that 
he encouraged literature and delighted in the society of 
artists ; that he was an amiable enthusiast as a student 
of Greek literature, going so far as to dig up the body 
of a celebrated scholar from his native Greek soil and 
causing it to be transported to Rimini, where it was 
preserved in the cathedral as a relic. We remember these 
things, I say ; but, strange to say, we forget that this was 
the same man who was impeached at Rome for heresy, 
parricide, incest, adultery, rape, and sacrilege. So in 

regard to the Medici. We love to think of them as the 

28* 



330 MED LEVA L HISTORY, 

• • » ' 

true fathers of the Renaissance in Italy. We recall with 
a glow of pleasure that famous description of Lorenzo 
the Maarnificeut at his villa near Fiesole. " In that 
villa/' says Hallam, "overhanging the towers of Flor- 
ence, in gardens Avhich Tully might have envied, with 
Ficino, Landino, and Politian at his side, he delighted 
his hours of leisure with the beautiful visions of the 
Platonic philosophy for which the summer stillness of 
an Italian sky appears the most congenial accompani- 
ment/' While we do this, we forget the stern but 
unheeded voice of Savonarola, as he whispered in the 
dying tyrant's ear, ^' Restore liberty to Florence." And 
so with the Popes of the fifteenth century ; we are blinded 
by the brilliancy of the scholarship and the love of pro- 
fane learning exhibited by such men as Nicholas V., the 
founder in modern times of public libraries, or Pius II., 
who, as ^neas Sylvius, was the most distinguished 
Greek scholar of his day, and we do not think of their 
nepotism, or of the efforts which they and their imme- 
diate successors made to establish, like the princes around 
them, ruling dynasties in their own families. Nothing 
is clearer, unfortunately, in history than that the encour- 
ao^ement of the arts and of learnino; mav coexist with 
the most thorough despotism in a government and with 
flagrant corruption in morals. The age of Augustus in 
the ancient world, and that of Louis XIV. in the modern, 
teach us the same truth on this subject as the history of 
Italy under its princes and Popes of the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries. 



MEDLEVAL ITALIAN DYNASTIES. 331 



But the day of vengeance was fast approaching, and 
the Italian governments, such as I have described them, 
were soon to be at the mercy of the power of the North- 
ern nations. 

Towards the close of the fifteenth century the prin- 
cipal powers of Italy were those of the Sforza, ruling 
over Lombardy and Genoa; the republic of Venice; 
Florence, under the house of the Medici; the Ko- 
magna, under the Orsini and Colonna and John Borgia ; 
the Pope; and the kingdom of the two Sicilies, under 
the house of Aragon. Each was striving for the mas- 
tery, and, as if to illustrate the truth of the proverb, 
Quern Deus vult 'perdere prius dementat, Charles VIII., 
King of France, was called in not only by the Sforza at 
Milan alone, but by Savonarola himself at Florence, to 
restore order. His own pretext was a claim to the throne 
of Naples as the heir of the house of Anjou ; and such 
was the weakness of the various governments that he 
marched from one end of Italy to the other without 
meeting any serious opposition, and took possession of 
the*Neapolitan kingdom. Wars then began, not between 
him and the Italian princes, but between France and 
the rival kings of Spain and Germany. This struggle 
continued until Italy became, in the language of di- 
plomacy, "a mere geographical ex})ression," a field for 
the exercise of the power of nations all of whom were 
equally strangers to her soil and hostile to the develop- 
ment of her national life. 



CHAPTER XII. 

MONASTICISM, CHIVALRY, AND THE CEUSADES. 

If we seek to understand fully the characteristics of 
any historical epoch, we must not confine ourselves to 
a study merely of the outward form of the organization 
of its government and institutions. Two very impor- 
tant things at least in the history of an age we shall 
be unable to discover in this way, — one its stream of 
tendency, and the other its capacity for growth. Very 
often in history we find that the spirit and the true life 
long remain, while the outward form by which that life 
was manifested at a particular epoch has become wholly 
decayed. What, of course, we seek to learn in history 
is the substance, and not the form, of a particular de- 
velopment ; w^hat survives and expands, and not what 
perishes in the using. With this object in view, we must 
extend somewhat the survey we have been taking of*the 
Middle Age. A simple account of that formal organi- 
zation of the Church and the State which grew up in 
Europe from the mingling of the Roman and Christian 
society with the barbarian element does not suffice to 
explain fully the nature of that peculiar form of social 
life which was adopted by the whole of Western Europe 
from the fall of the Empire to the close of the Crusades. 

There was an inner life, not always manifested in the 
332 



THREE INDIRECT INFLUENCES. 333 

external forms, a life resting on definite principles, on 
certain dogmas, and on common habits, the whole form- 
ing a perfectly homogeneous and unique type, controlled 
by a sentiment resembling what is now called public 
opinion as distinct from formal law. 

There are three peculiarities of that life, or rather 
three influences acting on and moulding it in its various 
phases, of which I propose to speak in this chapter. 
These three influences are Monasticism, Chivalry, and 
the Crusades. Without the constant presence and power 
of these indirect forces I do not see how the ieudal 
system, as I have described its relations to Church and 
State, could have so long continued as a form of govern- 
ment. These institutions, it seems to me, had much to 
do with what was fundamental and real in the life 
of the Middle Age. Their special and controlling in- 
fluence is manifest in every part of its history. A por- 
tion of it at least has survived, and has come down to 
us as a legacy; and perhaps when we speak with con- 
tempt of the outward features of the feudal system we 
sometimes forget how much we are controlled by the 
spirit which gave that system life. 

Monasticism then, in the Middle Age, may be consid- 
ered in one sense as the strong and earnest expression of 
the feeling of the time concerning the best method by 
which the clergy could perform their duties to their 
fellow-men ; chivalry, as embodying the Middle-Age 
i conception of the ideal life of the only class outside the 
clergy who had any real power, the knights; while the 



334 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

Crusades were the outcome of a combination between mo- 
nasticism and knighthood, — the object proposed by this 
combination, the glory and supremacy of the Church, 
being, in the opinion of the times, the grandest and 
worthiest to which either priest or layman could aspire. 
These three streams of influence are not only those 
which gave its true and best life to the feudal system 
and to the Middle Age while it lasted, but the spirit 
which informed that life characterizes whatever remains 
to us of that system which has been incorporated Jn our 
modern society. 

The practice ofmonasticism arose in the first instance 
from an earnest desire of devotees to lead a religious life 
of ideal purity and excellence. This practice has not 
been confined to those who held the Christian faith. In 
all ages of the world, in all countries, and in nearly all 
religions, there has been one form of the reh'gious life for 
the few, and another for the many, although the same 
religious creed or belief was common to both classes. 
In most of the religions of the world the line which 
separated these two classes was that upon one side of 
which was found asceticism in its highest sense as the 
rule and practice of religious life, and on the other side 
a thoroughly orthodox belief combined with a practice 
by which the ordinary duties of life could be performed 
and its pleasures enjoyed without a consciousness of vio- 
lating the obligations of duty. There seems to be a 
universal natural instinct which has led men to believe, 
at all times, that in the loftiest conception of the religious 



GROWTH OF MGNASTICISM. 335 

life there was an irreconcilable hostility between the 
flesh and the spirit^ — a form of Manicheism which we 
meet all through history, and which indeed formed the 
basis of most of the heresies of the Middle Age. The 
sacred books of Brahma and of Boudha recognize this 
distinction as fundamental, and they enjoin seclusion 
from the world and a great variety of acts of penance 
and self-mortification as highly meritorious, prescribing 
their observance as the sure method by which the devotee 
shall be absorbed at last into the Divine fountain of all 
being. So among the Jews, as is well known, there were 
ascetic sects, the Essenes and the Therapeutie, who 
sought by seclusion from the world and by keeping 
under the fleshly appetites to secure the Divine favor. 
The same principle, the aim of which was Divine per- 
fection, is found in many Oriental religions, and even 
among the warlike Saracens, who had their cloistered 
monks and their dervishes. 

Christian monasticism had its rise in Egypt, a land, 
above all others, where, from the days of the Ptolemies, 
religious sects and opinions have met in perpetual con- 
flict. The first Christian monks (who were laymen) 
adopted the solitary life of hermits about the beginning 
of the fourth century. Their earnest and well-meant but 
mistaken effort was to preserve the original purity of the 
Christian Church by transplanting it into the wilderness. 
The moral corruption of the Roman Empire, which was 
nominally Christian but was essentially heathen in the 
whole framework of its society, the oppressiveness of 



336 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

the Imperial taxes, the extremes of despotism and 
slavery, of extravagant luxury and hopeless poverty, 
the decay of all productive energy in science and the 
arts, the threatening incursions of the barbarians on 
the frontiers, and, above all, the profound belief that 
the end of the world and the judgment-day were at 
hand, combined to produce in the most earnest minds a 
desire to seek relief in seclusion from the world. 

The second stage of monasticism was cenobitla or 
cloister life, a substitution of the social for the solitary 
form of devotion. Under this form many monasteries, 
both for men and for women, grew up in Egypt, each 
with a complete organization and each governed by the 
strictest discipline, the time of the inmates being divided 
between acts of devotion and such labor as would sup- 
port the members of the community. The Eastern mon- 
asteries, however, never became great working establish- 
ments, such as we find later in the West. Like all 
Oriental people, those who fled to the desert to worship 
led a solitary life by preference, exclusively absorbed in 
the contemplation of the Divine life, hoping thereby, 
and by constant self-denial and the mortification of the 
flesh, to reach the ideal condition of Christian per- 
fection. 

When, however, the zeal for the monastic life ex- 
tended to Western Europe, its organization and methods 
were much modified by the practical minds of men like 
St. Jerome and St. Augustine, trained by Roman law and 
. in Roman traditions. There were many monasteries in 



ST. BENEDICT OF AURSIA. 337 

the West before the time of St. Benedict of Nursia (a.d. 
480) ; but he has been rightly considered the father of 
Western monasticism, for he not only founded an order 
to which many religious houses became attached, but he 
established a rule for their government which, in its 
main features, was adopted as the rule of monastic life 
by all the orders for more than five centuries, or until 
the time of St. Dominic and St. Francis of Assisi. 

Benedict was first a hermit, living in the mountains 
of Southern Italy, and in that region he afterwards 
established in succession twelv^e monasteries, each with 
twelve monks and a superior. In the year 520 he 
founded the great monastery of Monte Casino as tlie 
mother-house of his order, a house which became the 
most celebrated and powerful monastery, according to 
Montalembert, in the Catholic universe, celebrated es- 
pecially because there Benedict prepared his rule and 
formed the type which was to serve as a model to the 
innumerable communities submitting to it as a sovereign 
code. By that rule each monastery was to be governed 
absolutely, or at least in the sense in which a bishop 
governs his clergy, by an abbot elected by the monks, 
who were to be admitted as such only after a long no- 
vitiate and upon pronouncing a solemn vow. By this 
vow the candidate promised, among other things, to 
maintain poverty, chastity, and obedience to the abbot. 
These were always the conditions of monastic life ; their 
observance, and the obligation of the monks to lead a 
life of self-denial and labor both of body and mind, 

29 



338 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 



were enforced by very strict discipliue under the Bene- 
dictine rule. Neither in the East nor in tlie West were 
the monks originally ecclesiastics ; and it was not until 
the eighth century that they became priests, called regu- 
lars, in contrast with the ordinary parish clergy, who 
were called seculars. As missionaries, they proved the 
most powerful instruments in extending the authority 
and the boundaries of the Church. The monk had no 
individual property: even his dress belonged to the 
monastery. He was required to work, on the principle 
that an idle monk has ten devils to contend with, while a 
hard-working one has but a single one. To enable him 
to work efficiently, it was necessary to feed him well ; 
and such w^as the injunction of Benedict, as opposed to 
the former practice of strict asceticism. 

In less than a century after the death of Benedict the 
conquests of the barbarians in Italy, Gaul, and Spain 
were reconquered for civilization, and the vast territories 
of England, Germany, and Scandinavia Avere incorpo- 
rated into Christendom or opened as fields for mission- 
ary labor. In this bright chapter of the history of the 
Dark Ages the monks of the rule of St. Benedict w^ere 
the most conspicuous actors, and to them is due much 
of the progress which was made. The most illustrious 
Popes of those days, Leo and Gregory, had been 
monks; and when they became the heads of the 
Church, they made use to its fullest extent of the 
capacity of their brethren for labor among the heathen. 
I need not go over again the story of the conversion 



WORK OF THE BENEDICTINE MONKS. 339 

of the Anglo-Saxons by St. Augustine, or that of the 
Germans by St. Boniface, but we must remember that 
both of these men were monks, sent on their mission by 
a Pope who had been a monk, and that to their zeal and 
practical statesmanship is due not merely the form but 
the stability of the organization of Christianity in those 
countries. 

The Benedictine monk was in the truest sense the 
pioneer of civilization and Christianity in those regions 
where it was dangerous even for armed men to go. 
Moreover, it was he who, in his cloister, with the inces- 
sant din of arms around him, preserved and transcribed 
ancient manuscripts, both Christian and pagan, and who 
recorded his observations of current events, thus giving 
us the best materials we now possess for the history of 
remote times. The first musicians, farmers, painters, and 
statesmen in Europe, after the downfall of Imperial 
Kome and during the invasions of the barbarians, were 
monks. Whatever of earnestness, zeal, activity, and 
true statesmanship, combined with the self-denying spirit 
of Christianity, we observe for nearly five centuries of 
European history, we may regard, if not as the actual 
work of monks, yet as done under their influence and 
direction. 

The monastic system, like all others, had its period of 
prosperous activity, to be followed by that of decline. 
The monasteries became very rich, and although, of 
course, individual monks still possessed no property, yet 
after the death of Charlemagne and until the close of 



340 MEDIJEVAL HISTORY. 

the eleventh centoiy they suffered from the inevitable 
corruption of i)ride and laziness. Their zeal thus be- 
came cooled, and their energies diverted from the work 
which the Church had assigned them. Their real power 
and influence were gone with their poverty. And yet so 
persistent was the general belief in the value, both to the 
Church and the world, of a true type of monkhood, that 
good men in the darkest days prayed for its restoration. 
Just then appeared the greatest reformer of the abuses 
of the monastic life, if not the greatest monk in history, 
St. Bernard (1091-1153). He revived the practice in 
the monastery of Citeaux, which he first entered, and in 
that of Clairvaux, which he afterwards founded, of the 
sternest discipline Avhich had been enjoined by St. Bene- 
dict. He became the ideal type of the perfect monk, 
enthusiastic, ardent, austere, intolerant, forgetting him- 
self, and wholly filled with a burning zeal for the tri- 
umph of the Church. His theory and practice were that 
society, the family, all human interests, were nothing; 
the Church everything. The power which a true monk, 
according to the standard of those days, might wield 
over the minds of the people is shown by the variety of 
offices St. Bernard was asked to fill. He was not a Pope, 
but he was greater than any Pope of his day, and for 
nearly half a century the history of the Christian Church 
is the history of the influence of one monk, the Abbot 
of Clairvaux. He was appointed by the King of France 
to decide which of the candidates for the papacy. Inno- 
cent II. or Anacletus, had been canonical ly elected. At 



ST. BERNARD. 341 



the request of the Knights Templar, he drew up the 
original statutes for that semi-monastic, semi-military 
order; and with the greatest difficulty he withdrew from 
Milan, where such was his fame that the citizens insisted 
that he should become their archbishop. He pres-ided at 
the Council of Sens, which condemned the doctrines of 
the illustrious but unfortunate Abelard ; and so extraor- 
dinary were his power and influence that he was appointed 
by the Pope to preach the second Crusade, a duty which 
he performed with such success that he even induced 
the King of France himself, contrary to the advice of 
the best statesmen of the country, to go to the Holy 
Land as a Crusader. No single figure is as conspicuous 
in mediaeval history as that of St. Bernard, if we except 
Charlemagne. But the great Emperor was the world- 
monarch, ruling by what was really, no matter how dis- 
guised, physical force. St. Bernard has also proved a 
world-monarch, whose empire did not cease with his 
death, for his weapons were spiritual. They were "pov- 
erty, chastity, and obedience;'' and these, in the hands of 
those who know how to use them, history, if it tells us 
any lesson worth remembering, tells us are irresistible. 

The monks have been called the right arm of the 
papacy ; and it would seem that when any emergency 
arose in which it became necessary for the Church to 
employ a distinct agency for a particular purpose, the 
object was accomplished by the establishment of a new 
order of monks. This appears to me to have been the 

case when the orders of the Preachers or Dominicans 

29* 



342 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

and of the Minorites or Franciscans were founded. 
Both of these orders were established about the same 
time (1215), and each to supply a need which was then 
specially felt. Preaching was not only not an essential 
but it was not an ordinary part of the Church service in 
the Middle Age. Christianity was sacerdotal ; it com- 
manded ; it did not aim to persuade. It was the exclu- 
sive privilege of the bishops to preach; but the larger 
portion of them were feudal barons, whose education 
fitted them as little for this office as their inclination 
prompted them to assume it. The education of the 
faithful was by means of a splendid ritual. But by the 
beginning of the thirteenth century the vast crowds 
which flocked to the universities and frequented the lec- 
tures of even so heretical a teacher as Abelard, as well 
as the use of the vernacular or common language in 
the place of tlie Latin, made it very clear that it was the 
duty of the Church to instruct the faithful in doctrine 
as well as to arouse devotional feeling. 

Just at this juncture St. Dominic, founder of the order 
of the Friar Preachers, appears. He Avas a Spaniard 
(born in 1170), and he first becomes conspicuous in 
Languedoc during the crusade against the Albigenses, 
preaching there with the utmost vehemence against 
tlie heresy of which they were accused. The order of 
Friar Preachers was authorized by the Pope in 1213, 
and shortly afterwards Dominican convents were estab- 
lished throughout Europe, and the voices of Dominican 
preachers penetrated into every land. Within a hundred 



6-7: FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 343 

years after the death of St. Domiiilc the reb'gious houses 
of his order numbered four hundred and seventy-two ; 
and when we remember that to this order was specially 
given by the Pope the defence of the dogmas of tlie 
Church, and that the Inquisition was established and 
placed in charge of the Dominican friars for the en- 
forcement of the observance of those dogmas, we can 
form some conception of the power and influence of 
these monks in carrying out a general scheme of Church 
policy. 

St. Dominic had supplied one great need of the Church 
in the thirteenth century, — that of preaching and in- 
struction ; and it was reserved for another great saint, 
Francis of Assisi, about the same time, to reorganize the 
ministration of that Divine charity which is the most 
characteristic feature of practical Christianity, and which 
has in all ages been regarded by the Church as the very 
bond of peace and of all virtues. In the Middle Age, 
and especially in its later days, the revolt of the popular 
mind was against the wealth of the clergy, which, it Avas 
claimed, removed them from sympathy witli the poor 
and suffering. The watchwords of that revolt which 
we hear among such heretics as the Cathari, the Wal- 
denses, or poor men of Lyons, the Lollards, and the fol- 
lowers of Wyclif, were poverty and self-sacrifice. St. 
Francis made himself the echo of the popular complaint, 
and sought to bring about a reform within the Church 
by means of a monastic order which should carry the 
principle of the renunciation of riches and a love for 



344 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

the poor to a point undreamed of by tlie sectaries around 
him. St. Francis had some peculiar advantages for the 
task which he undertook. He was emphatically, in our 
modern phrase, the right man in the right place at the 
right time. His followers compared him to our Lord; 
and it is easier to find fault with the sort of idolatrous 
devotion which they exhibited towards him, than to 
Avonder that such was their attitude, for of all human 
beings who ever made the life of the Son of Man a 
model, St. Francis seems to have possessed in the high- 
est degree that Divine charity preached by the life and 
the words of the Master. 

It is easy to say that St. Francis must have been a 
little crazy, when he spoke of the sun as his brother, the 
moon and the stars as his sisters, and the earth as his 
mother, and when he called even upon the birds of the 
air to praise the Lord. Yet it is a curious fact that most 
of the great reformers in history have been accounted 
by the men of their time crazy, and perhaps even more 
curious that their very craziness seems to have given 
them their great force. The Pope himself. Innocent III., 
one of the most illustrious men who ever sat in the chair 
of St. Peter, was disposed to regard Francis as crazy 
when he asked for authority to establish an order in 
which the members were to be bound by vows which it 
would be, in his opinion, impossible to fulfil. To him one 
of the Cardinals made an answer which should be burned 
into the heart of every man who is in earnest in his de- 
sire to do good to his fellow-creatures. *^ To suppose," 



THE LIFE OF THE FRANCISCANS. 345 

he said, "that anything is difficult or impossible with 
God is to blaspheme Christ and His gospel/' 

So the order of the Minor Brethren, or Gray Friars, 
was established. Their life was to differ from ordinary 
monastic life in this, that they were not to be secluded, 
as were the okler orders, from the world. In this re- 
spect the rule of St. Dominic was the same. Those who 
entered the order of St. Francis were required to sell all 
their goods and distribute its price to the poor. They 
were forbidden to receive money or house or field ; 
strangers and pilgrims in this world, they must live in 
poverty and humility. They must always be poor, for 
Christ made Himself poor for us. Even their houses 
and their churches should be small, mean in appearance, 
and without ornament. St. Francis himself was the living 
exemplar of all these precepts. In those days the fetid 
suburbs of the great towns had engendered a virulent 
form of that most loathsome disease, the Eastern leprosy. 
St. Francis was the first who did anything in a properly 
organized way for the relief of these miserable outcasts, 
and his life is full of instances of his heroic, nay, better, 
his Christian devotion to this repulsive duty. His fol- 
lowers were to visit the towns, two and two, in just so 
much clothing as the commonest beggar could procure. 
They were to sleep at night under arches or in the 
porches of deserted churches, among idiots, lepers, and 
outcasts, to beg their bread from door to door, and to 
set an example of piety and submission. Francis, as it 
has been well said, was the saint of the people, and of a 



346 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

poetic people especially, like the Italians. His system 
was the democracy of Christianity, but as long as he lived 
it was a humble, meek, quiescent democracy. It was, 
too, a sort of pacific mysticism, which consoled the poor 
for the inequalities of this life by the hopes of heaven. 
It spread with the rapidity of a contagion through 
Europe. To the lower orders everywhere his teachings 
seemed almost a second gospel, and he himself like a 
second Kedeemer. 

It is not pleasant to remember that the. grand concep- 
tion of the Christian life embodied in the precepts and 
the example of St. Francis was not destined to have a 
permanent duration. The lofty ideal of his rule was 
not long maintained, and the mean appearance which 
had once been the distinguishing badge of the mendicant 
friar and his convent was exchanged for sumptuous 
churches and well-endowed religious houses. The spirit 
of the founder was gone, and the true source of the 
strength of his order — Its poverty — went with it. But 
its history, even if all that is good in it be the holy life 
of St. Francis and the sympathy which his rule exhibits 
with the poor and the suffering, contains most suggestive 
lessons in regard to the real life of the Middle Age. 

We turn now to consider another institution or prac- 
tice outside of the formal organization of the Church 
and the State which colored very much the stream of 
tendency in the Middle Age. I refer to chivalry, whicli 
we may regard as representing the mediaeval conception 
of the ideal life of a Christian knight. In some respects 



THE MEDIEVAL KNIGHT. 347 

cliivaliy may be considered as the finest and most con- 
summate flower of that civilization which grew out of 
tlie influence of the Church upon the Teutonic warrior 
chief. We may say in the outset that the knight was 
not often in fact, what he is represented to be in the 
romances of the time, a man whose sole aim in life was 
the defence of the Church and the championship of un- 
protected Avomen ; but we must remember that such was 
his professed vocation, and such was the standard by 
which he claimed to be judged. 

The mediaeval knight was a peculiar and exceptional 
type, in a great measure the growth of the age, and one 
wholly unlike the warrior of any other period of his- 
tory. He bears very little resemblance in his conduct 
and motives, for instance, to those heroes of antiquity of 
whose exploits we read in the Iliad. Achilles is one 
of those heroes, perhaps the greatest of them all. His 
answer to the prayer of Hector (whom he had mortally 
wounded) that he would deliver his dead body for 
burial to his father is not that of a hero, but of a sav- 
age. " Cease, wretched one," he says, " your begging. 
I wish I had the force and the courage to devour your 
quivering flesh as a return for the evils you have done 
me. No ! if your father Priam should offer me as a 
ransom for your body its weight in gold, I would not 
give it up. The dogs and the vultures should devour 
it." Heroes who could talk in this way were not likely 
to be very civil to women. Hear the manner in which 
Jupiter upbraids Juno: "E-emember the time when I 



348 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

hung you up in the air with two anvils tied to your feet 
and your hands bound by a golden chain/' Greek 
women, I suppose, must have been very attractive, or 
there would probably not have been a Trojan War; but 
it is rather discouraging to find that Helen, who was 
carried off from her home on account of her extraor- 
dinary beauty, does not seem to be certain whether she 
prefers Menelaus to Paris; and as to Andromache, I 
fear that constancy was not one of her virtues, not- 
withstanding the pathetic parting scene between Hector 
and herself. 

The mediaeval knight was cast in a different mould. 
He was a barbarian, not tamed by the Church so as to 
destroy his warlike instincts, but rather taught by the 
Church to employ that sentiment of personal indepen- 
dence and love of adventure which formed the very 
essence and force of his nature in its defence. He was 
taught to render valuable service chiefly in two ways, — 
in the defence of the Church proper when its orthodoxy 
needed, as it often did in those wild days, armed advo- 
cacy, and in shielding from cruelty and oppression cer- 
tain classes of the suffering and feeble, especially women, 
whose protection had always been a particular object of 
the Church's solicitude. There seems to me to have 
been no greater instance of the Church's triumph in 
the Middle Age than this conversion of the weapons of 
barbarism into agencies for doing effectively its work. 
It is not difficult to explain the reasons for the progress 
of the Church in other directions, extraordinary as it 



BARBARIANS TAUGHT BY THE CHURCH. 349 

was. We can in a measure, at least, understand it by 
recalling its thorough organization and wise administra- 
tion, by means of which history shows us that great re- 
sults in-other undertakings, both before and since, have 
been achieved. But when the problem was not merely 
how to subdue the rebellious elements in the Teutonic 
character by the force of the Church's teachings, but so 
to control and guide them as to make these rude war- 
riors her most devoted champions, its successful solution 
seems little short of marvellous. How, then, were Teu- 
tonic warriors made Cliristian knights ? 

As I have before said, the Church was at first the 
teacher of the barbarians, not their ally, for it naturally 
hesitated to trust chiefs who were heathen when they 
were not Arians with that control over its organization 
which had always been exercised by the orthodox Ro- 
man Emperors. Not until the conversion of the Franks, 
or even later, the date of the coronation of Charlemagne, 
do we find the old Imperial relations of confidence be- 
tween Church and State re-established in full vigor. 
When the alliance was renewed, it was so managed, 
strange to say, that the conquests of the Franks, nay, 
even the ferocity and ambition of their chiefs, were 
made to minister at least to the enlargement of the 
boundaries of the Church. Expeditions against the 
heathen by these warriors always had the sanction of 
the Church. A new way of serving God and mam- 
mon at the same time seems to have been discovered, 

and success in such enterprises gratified the lust of 

30 



350 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

conquest, as well as, in the opinion of the age, advanced 
God's kingdom. Wherever the Franks conquered, there 
was orthodoxy firmly planted ; and this, perhaps, is the 
explanation of the complacency with which the Church 
regarded such wholesale conversions as those of Charle- 
magne of the miserable captives on the banks of the 
Elbe, who saved their lives by abjuring the religion of 
their fathers, or of the followers of Clovis, who obeyed 
his order to be baptized as they would have done a 
command to attack the enemy. 

Christianity and war thus came into a very strange, 
but a very active, alliance, such as we see illustrated 
afterwards on a large scale in the Crusades. To fight 
for the Church was in those days not merely the liighest 
duty, but the noblest ambition also of those whose 
fathers had always regarded courage in battle as the sum 
of all virtue. It was very often, as may be supposed, 
their only way of showing their devotion to it. Grad- 
ually the effect of this strange combination was seen in 
the belief, which soon became universal, not merely that 
the worthiest end of life was to do the Church's bidding, 
but to do it in the only way possible for a layman, by 
the power of his sword. Hence lay service of a special 
kind was recognized as one of the agencies of the Church, 
and out of the recognition by the Church of such a ser- 
vice arose the institution of chivalry or knighthood. No 
one was born to such an honor in the earlier time, not 
even the king himself. It was open, like the priesthood, 
to all freemen. He upon whom it was conferred made 



THE POINT OF HONOR. 351 

previously due proof of his fitness, and was then set 
apart for his work by a solemn consecration, pro- 
nouncing vows intended to be as binding as those 
taken by the priest at his ordination. His sword was 
blessed by the priest at the altar, in token that thence- 
forth it should be used only in defending the cause of 
God and of the weak and oppressed. 

The Church, not always trusting to a sense of duty as 
a restraining power, appealed to another motive, which 
often controlled the knight when every other was pow- 
erless, and that was his pride in maintaining a position 
which was supposed to be befitting his rank and station. 
Out of this grew that sentiment of personal honor which 
was so characteristic a feature of chivalry. Men who 
could never be taught to do what was right because it 
was right, soon learned to do right because it was a 
becoming thing in them, as knights and nobles, to do 
so. Noblesse oblige was the motto of their order. This 
sentiment of honor was a deep-seated instinct with these 
children of the North, who are said to have felt a stain 
upon that honor like a wound. It continued to be the 
governing principle of the most noble among them long 
after the standard of what was honorable and the stand- 
ard of what was true and right differed greatly. The 
general notions prevailing at a particular time in regard 
to the point of honor formed the practical guide for the 
conduct of the knights, affecting them very much as 
public opinion affects people^s actions now. 

Chivalry must not be regarded as maintaining, in any 



352 MEDL-EVAL HISTORY. 

proper sense, a moral code. We find even in typical 
knights the strange juxtaposition in the same person of 
brute force with the meekness and gentleness of the 
Christian ; the superb pride and arrogance of the barba- 
rian with the punctilious observance of the most digni- 
fied and courtly forms of intercourse ; a spirit of rapacity, 
cruelty, and injustice, often restrained only by the fear 
lest giving way to it would be deemed unknightly; a 
gross irregularity in the marriage relation, combined with 
a pretentious knight-errantry which strove to redress 
the wrongs of every oppressed woman except those of 
the kniglit's own wife. This is a strange jumble; but 
it means that while knightly life was too often soiled by 
the common coarse life of the time, still it bore within 
it a seed which was imperishable, and which has become 
one of the most precious portions of that heritage which 
comes to us from the Middle Age. The modern gentle- 
man in his best estate is the true successor of the medi- 
sevaj knight, and his code of conduct, where it is not 
wholly based upon a sense of duty, rests upon a sen- 
timent of personal honor, which teaches him to do 
some thino;s and to avoid others because in so doino; he 
does what he conceives to be worthy and becoming his 
position. The unwritten code of the gentleman is as 
binding upon him as the vows of the knight, and for 
the same reason, namely, because he scorns to do an 
unworthy act. 

I have little time left to speak of the Crusades. With 
the main events of that history I must suppose my 



THE CRUSADES. 353 



readers sufficiently familiar, or at any rate the means 
of refreshing the memory are within reach should it be 
needful to do so. I wish now specially to draw attention 
to a certain aspect of the Crusades, or rather of the cru- 
sading spirit which brouglit about alike the wars against 
the Albigenses, the conflict with the Saracens in Spain, 
as well as the Crusades, commonly so called, in the Holy 
Land. It Avas all the direct outgrowth of the combina- 
tion of monasticism with knighthood. In the oriraniza- 
tion of the Church in those days there was no machinery 
save that moved by the undying energy of the monks 
and of the knights which could have set on foot those 
vast expeditions which, for nearly two hundred years, 
embarked for the East. Some of the greatest Popes 
(Sylvester II. and Gregory VII. among others) preached 
with all their authority the holiness of the cause, urged 
upon every man the duty of assuming the cross, and 
promised the highest rewards of the future life to those 
who should fall fighting for the rescue of tlie Holy 
Sepulchre ; but nothing was done until Peter the Hermit 
and St. Bernard roused the passions of the European 
chivalry against the Infidel. The Crusades, as is well 
known, after the first ardor had cooled, were made by 
their leaders a pretext for a policy in the East which 
was wholly condemned by the Church as foreign to the 
original design, and in the pursuit of which the great 
central idea which gave them birth was either forgotten 
or ignored. But in the beginning those who went were 

in terrible earnest; they were in earnest not merely 

30* 



354 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

because monks and knights had roused their zeal when 
Popes and bishops had failed, but because these monks 
aud kniglits only asked them to follow where they them- 
selves led. The first Crusaders may have been very 
ignorant and very fanatical, but these very qualities led 
them to do some very grand as well as some very foolish 
things. Take this illustration for instance in regard to 
the point of honor. When the army reached Antioch, 
the Moslems, evidently puzzled to understand why this 
immense array should come from the ends of the earth 
to secure the free admission of pilgrims to a sepulchre, 
offered to permit the army to enter Jerusalem if they 
would do so without their arms. This offer was repelled 
with scorn by the knightly leaders of the Crusaders, who 
felt that the object of the expedition had not been gained 
unless the Holy City was conquered by the sacrifice of 
their own blood. Again, what a picture do we see of 
the religion of the time, and of the strange combination 
of pride and humility which marked the ideal knight, 
when we find Godfrey de Bouillon refusing to become 
King of Jerusalem ! " No, no,'^ said that highest type 
of chivalry ; " let me be only the defender of the Holy 
Sepulchre: think not that I can ever wear a golden 
crown here where the King of kings, Jesus Christ the 
Son of God, wore a crown of thorns on that day when 
He died for the sins of the world. '^ 

As in the East, so in the West the crusading spirit was 
kept alive and made aggressive by the monks and the 
knights. An illustration of this may be found in the 



THE ALBIGENSES, 355 

crusade against the Albigenses, which has been called 
by an eminent historian the conquest of municipal or 
republican France, or that portion of the country south 
of the river Loire, by feudal or knightly France, or that 
portion, speaking roughly, to the north of that river. 
The first had all the culture, refinement, and Roman 
civilization of the time, but with it loose habits of living 
and opinions regarded as heretical. Pope Innocent III., 
once himself a monk, determined to extirpate this heresy 
by exterminating the inhabitants and filling their places 
with good Catholics. He called upon Count Raymond 
of Toulouse, the sovereign of the country, to destroy his 
own subjects who were alleged to be heretics, and upon 
his neglect or refusal to do so he directed that a crusade 
should be preached against them. His principal agents 
in this work were the Dominican friars, led by St. Dom- 
inic and the monks of Citeaux. In answer to their 
frantic aj^peals for aid in maintaining the orthodoxy 
of the Church, and with the promise of extravagani: 
rewards both of an earthly and a heavenly nature, 
the petty chieftains of Northern and Western France 
Avith their retainers rushed down upon unhappy Langue- 
doc and Provence in overwhelming numbers. There, 
under the command of Simon de Montfort, the lord 
of an unimportant fief in the neighborhood of Paris, 
they waged for many years one of the cruellest wars in 
history, strangely called a " holy war." By this war the 
country was wellnigh ruined, the inhabitants killed or 
driven out of it, and its ancient government completely 



356 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

• — • 

overthrown. Still, the orthodox faith was re-established, 
the zeal of the monks triumphed ; but the knights who 
had been the right arni. of the Church in this conflict, 
and who had hoped when they engaged in the crusade 
to divide that fair lanct among themselves, founding 
therein a large number of petty sovereignties, were (it is 
satisfactory to know) cheated at least of their earthly 
reward, the province at the close of the war being annexed 
to the crown of France. 

The history of Spain in the Middle Age is the history 
of a crusade of eight hundred years' duration. From 
the battle of Xeres, in 712, to the final expulsion of the 
Saracens from Granada, in 1492, there was in that 
country a perpetual conflict between the Cross and the 
Crescent. The Visigothic Christians, driven by the vic- 
torious Saracens to the mountains of Galicia, kept there 
the purity of the faith, and never permitted their pur- 
pose of revenge to falter. They needed no monks to 
stimulate their ardor ; and Spain presents a curious in- 
stance in history of a country made Catholic 'par excel- 
lence by the crusading spirit of Christian knights alone. 
To them the idea of country and of religion was one 
and inseparable, and as they slowly advanced, in the 
course of ages winning one district after another by their 
swords from the hated Moslems, they left ineffaceable 
marks of their blind zeal for the faith at every step, — 
marks so ineffliceable that they are easily recognized at 
this day in the condition and policy of that country. 
The brilliant culture of the Saracens found no favor in 



CRUSADERS IN SPAIN. 357 

the eyes of these Crusaders, for it was all tainted with 
heresy, and to them heresy was an accursed thing. The 
great works of public utility which had marked the 
Saracenic occupation of Spain, — a system of irrigation, 
for instance, the fruit of their knowledge of liydraulic 
science, by which the plains of Granada and Andalusia 
were made the most fertile districts of Europe, gardens 
which they planted, rivalling in beauty those of far- 
famed Damascus, universities which they founded, whose 
reputation was so wide-spread that they numbered among 
their pupils a monk who afterwards became Pope as 
Sylvester II., grand libraries, the treasure-houses of the 
wisdom of the past, at that time far exceeding in the 
number of the books they contained those of any country 
in Europe, mosques and palaces whose architecture even 
now excites the wonder of the world, — all these things 
were not only valueless, they were hateful, to the Spanish 
Crusaders, and they were destroyed because they had the 
mark of the beast upon them. 

There can be no doubt whatever that in the Middle 
Age the Saracens in Spain were vastly superior to the 
inhabitants of any other country in Europe in their 
knowledge of science and its applications to the useful 
arts. Yet so inseparably was hatred of their religion 
associated in the minds of their conquerors with every- 
thing that was characteristic of the Saracens, that Spain 
was the last country of the West to learn those useful 
arts of which the disciples of the Prophet had been the 
pioneers on her own soil. By a natural process, the 



358 MEDLEVAL HISTORY. 

blind zeal against the Saracens was easily transformed 
to a profound contempt for the occupations in which 
they engaged, and especially for the labor which pro- 
duced such wonderful results. Hence the step was easy 
to a contempt for all mechanical labor ; and hence we ob- 
serve in the history of Spain, from the time the country 
was occupied by the Saracens down to the present hour, 
that nowhere else in Europe has the line between those 
who work and those who do not, between the lords of 
the country and the inhabitants of the town, between 
the hidalgo and the pecherOy between the soldier and the 
citizen, been so strongly and deeply marked. We shall 
find, as we go on in our historical investigations, that 
labor was in many ways the great civilizer of modern 
Europe. As it did its work, it had everywhere to over- 
come the knightly contempt for what was supposed to 
be its servile character; but in Spain, formidable as was 
this obstacle, it became wellnigh insurmountable, because 
it was intrenched in the strongest religious prejudice. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY, THE SCHOOLMEN, AND THE 
UNIVERSITIES. 

One method of testing what the true life of a nation 
is, would be to ascertain its theory and practice in regard 
to the education of the young. If we can discover what 
the best minds of a nation at any particular age of its 
history most thorouglily believe, — in other words, what 
is taught, and how they teach it, — we have gained some 
knowledge of the principle of life in that nation and 
what it holds most dear in that life. Education is, of 
course, a broad term, and in its widest sense it includes 
every influence which affects, by precept or example, the 
actions of human beino-s. In this sense the education of 
the Middle Age, of which its peculiar life was the out- 
come, was moulded largely by forces of which I have 
spoken in preceding chapters, such as the power of the 
Church, the remains of Roman civilization, feudalism, 
monastlcism, chivalry, and the like. The question now 
is, what did the life thus formed teach its own age and 
those which succeeded it, and what methods did it 
employ? The impression which many receive is that 
this era in history ought to serve only as a warning 
against fundamental errors ; that necessarily its life was a 

life of force, one solely of conflict, strife, and confusion. 

359 



MEDL-EVAL HISTORY. 



Perhaps this is one of the reasons why it was formerly 
the practice, and perhaps in some quarters still is, to 
speak of the Middle Age as the ^^ Dai^h Ages,'' meaning 
thereby that they form an era in the world's history in 
which in all the relations of life the governing power 
was pre-eminently one in which reason and justice and 
truth had no sway. 

When, however, we come to explore more carefully its 
inner recesses, we find, in strange juxtaposition with the 
reign of force which is so conspicuous a feature of the 
time, a very rich, abundant, and altogether peculiar 
intellectual life, wliich exhibited its power in the efforts 
of master-minds to uphold the theories of the Middle 
Age in Church and State. There was, too, a thoroughly 
organized and universally adopted system of scholastic 
education designed to train the young to defend these 
theories on grounds of reason and of right, and they 
were supposed to be by this method as well prepared 
for the performance of the special duties of the life which 
they were to lead as our young men are educated for their 
future work. It is this mediaeval technical education of 
the young, so difierent from ours, that we propose to 
examine in this chapter, as throwing light on the life 
of the age. That system was one which we may now 
regard as characterized by fundamental errors: still, it is 
interesting in itself to study the scheme and methods of 
instruction in Europe for nearly a thousand years, and, 
besides, it is, like feudalism, a very curious illustration of 
the life of the time. Like feudalism, too, it contains, 



IMPERIAL SCHOOLS. 361 

notwithstanding its many strange features, the germs of 
much that has been transplanted into our own modern 
systems. We shall probably find in it, too, another ilhis- 
tration of the unbroken continuity of history, a con- 
tinuity which is its very essence, but which sometimes 
escapes our notice as it is hidden from our view for a 
time beneath the surface of passing events. We should 
hardly expect at first to find any of the missing links 
which go to make up the chain in the general practice 
and habit of scholastic education during that portion of 
the world's history, when its most conspicuous features 
were the tumult and strife characteristic of the Middle 
Age. But we shall discover, if I mistake not, that the 
mediseval.systems of education have left marks in history 
as ineffaceable as mediaeval theories of government in 
Church and State. 

In the declining Eoman Empire, among the many 
agencies of civilization which the Church appropriated 
was the Imperial organization of education. During the 
first three centuries of the Christian era, schools, liber- 
ally endowed by such Emperors as Hadrian, Marcus 
Aurelius, Vespasian, and Theodosius, existed- in all the 
large cities of the Empire, East and West. In these 
schools the young were taught to read correctly, and after- 
wards the plots of plays and poems were explained to 
them, and some outline of history given. Much time 
was then occupied in translating passages from Greek 
into Latin and then back again into Greek. The whole 
system was founded upon a study of language, upon what 

31 



3G2 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

we should call now grammar and rhetoric; and this was 
a sensible basis for the object sought after, which was 
chiefly to make the young man who was trained in these 
schools a forensic orator. The Church, fully alive to the 
necessity of educating not merely her clergy but the 
youth of the better class of the laity also, was at times 
sorely puzzled to determine whether they should be 
trained in schools where the text-books were filled with 
the praises of the heathen gods and with the horrors of 
the heathen mythology. Unable at that time to estab- 
lish schools of her own, the Church permitted her chil- 
dren to attend the heathen schools, not as a matter of 
choice, but of necessity. Some of the greatest of the 
early Fathers of the Church, Augustine and Jerome 
for instance, had been in their youth eminent scholars 
after the Roman pattern ; but with a keen recollection of 
the pleasures of their early studies they retained such a 
conviction of the pernicious influence on Christian morals 
of the works of the more celebrated writers of antiquity, 
that all their influence was used to discountenance as far 
as possible their study. 

With the invasion of the Franks the Imperial schools 
in the West were closed, and a considerable period elapsed 
in which apparently no systematic instruction was given 
anywhere to the young. The revival of education, as 
of many other of the agencies of civilization in that 
truly darkest of all dark days, — the eighth century, — 
was due to the Church. By its authority schools attached 
to each cathedral and each monastery were established. 



CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS. 363 

From these schools all study of Pagan authors was 
necessarily excluded. The system, the method, the 
form in which the instruction was given, did not differ 
much from that which had been used in the Imperial, 
schools. The boys were taught to read, but it was that 
they might study the Bible and understand the services; 
to write, in order that they might multiply copies of the 
sacred books and of the psalter; to understand music, 
so that they might sing with due effect the Ambrosian 
chant. They studied arithmetic; but it was chiefly 
that they might know how to calculate the return of 
Easter. 

Both the schools attached to the monasteries and those 
of the cathedrals were thus thoroughly ecclesiastical in 
their tone and spirit, and the principal object was to 
qualify the pupils, as I have said, for the performance 
of the services of the Church. The traditions of learn- 
ing, so far as it had to do with Pagan antiquity, were 
wholly lost, buried in the invasion that overwhelmed 
all that was distinctive in Eoman civilization. For 
nearly two centuries we hear of the studies of the 
monks of St. Benedict in Italy and the attempt by 
St. Boniface to transplant into Germany the Benedictine 
rule with its obligations to study by the monks, of the 
learning of the Irish monks, and especially of St. Co- 
lumba at lona; but it is evident that what was taught 
in the monastic schools was very narrow and meagre 
in its character, and the reverse of liberalizing in the 
modern sense in its spirit. 



364 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

Out of one of these schools, however, came a man 
who was to open a new era in education in Western 
Europe, and that w^as Alcuin, the head of the cathedral 
school of York. This school, strange to say, was situ- 
ated near the outer limit of civilization, in a country 
more utterly and purely Teutonic, — that is to say, more 
barbarous and less Roman, — at that time, than any other 
portion of Western Europe. And yet the school itself 
wi^is full of the traditions and methods of St. Benedict, 
and of Pope Gregory the Great, his disciple and admirer. 
Although in so remote a corner of the world, the ex- 
planation of the cause of the great eminence of this 
school is not difficult. The secret is to be found in the 
character of the library attached to the school. This 
library contained not only the dogmatic works of the 
Fathers of the Church, but portions, at least, of \\\^ 
writings of Yirgil, of Lucan, of Pliny, of Cicero, and 
of various other classical authors. 

Charlemagne, who aspired to be not merely the con- 
queror of the world, but its civilizer also, met Alcuin in 
Parma towards the close of the eighth century; and, 
with that sure judgment of human character which is 
one of the gifts of truly great men, he invited the 
scholar to reside at his court at Aix-la-Chapelle, and to 
establish in the palace itself a school, in which those 
who were looking forward to holding high positions in 
the Church and State under him should become pupils. 
The establishment of this school forms an era in the 
history of education; for although one of its objects, 



ALCUIN AS A TEACHER. 365 

like that of the cathedral and monastic schools, was to 
confirm those who were there instructed in the orthodox 
faith, yet the position of the scholars, many of whom 
seem to have been of the laity, and the method of teach- 
ing adopted, differed from those found elsewhere. In his 
zeal for learning, Charlemagne himself became a pupil ; 
and his example was followed by his three sons, by his 
wife, by his sister, — in short, by all the membei's of the 
royal family, — and by other distinguished personages at 
his court. Alcuin taught at this school of the palace 
Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectics or Logic, Arithmetic, 
Geometry, Music, and Astronomy, — that is to say, three 
arts and four sciences, as they were then classified, — the 
trlvimn and quadriviumj as this method of instruction 
was afterwards called in the mediaeval universities. It 
may be admitted that this seems a strange division of 
the subjects of human knowledge and inquiry; and yet 
it embraced a good deal more than would now be taught 
under such heads, and all that was at that time sup- 
posed to have anything to do with the development of a 
man as a Christian and a good subject of the Emperor. 
Alcuin's ignorance of some of the elementary notions 
of grammar, rhetoric, and particularly of astronomy, is 
very conspicuous: still, with all his blunders, he possessed 
that which is perhaps the most valuable gift of the 
teacher, the power of aw^akening in the minds of his pu- 
pils interest in the subjects taught. Charlemagne's zeal, 
at least, was so stimulated by the knowledge he gained, 

poor and starving as it seems to us, that he issued an 

31* 



366 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

edict or capitulary in 787 which has been called the 
great charter of modern European education. In this 
he tells the bishops that the study of letters, both for 
their own instruction and for the purpose of teaching 
others, should be regularly kept up among the clergy, 
and that such learning is absolutely essential if they 
desire to understand the mysteries of the faith and the 
true meaning of the figurative and allegorical language 
of the Scriptures. This edict was followed by two 
others before the close of the century. In the first the 
Emperor directs that candidates for orders shall not be 
taken solely, as formerly, from the servile class, but from 
the sons of freemen, and in the other, after arguing that 
study is a means whereby the life of the righteous is 
nourished and ennobled and the man himself fortified 
against temptation, he directs that hereafter, in all the 
schools, provision shall be made for the gratuitous in- 
struction of the children of the laity. AYe think of 
Charlemagne as the monarch and conqueror of the world. 
Perhaps we do not as often recall the imperishable and 
fundamental ideas upon which he really built, not merely 
the idea of a universal monarchy after the pattern of 
Imperial Rome, but also an idea which was to be the 
most fruitful of all that rule us in modern times, — 
that of universal and gratuitous education. 

But Charlemagne seems, like many others before and 
since, to have outgrown his teacher, even when that 
teacher was so eminent a man as Alcuin. Among other 
subjects in which the keen inquiring mind of the 



CLEMENT HEAD OE THE PALACE SCHOOL. 367 

Emperor had a special interest was astronomy. The 
pkmet Mars having disappeared from the heavens for 
nearly a whole year, Charlemagne naturally asked his 
teacher what could be the meaning of this phenomenon. 
He was told that the sun had detained the planet in 
its course, but had at last released it through the fear 
of the Nemsean lion, the star having become visible 
again first in the constellation of Leo. • 

Even in those days this theory of the movement of 
the heavenly bodies must have been, to say the least, 
very unsatisfactory to a man like Charlemagne. At all 
events, we find him soon after transferring Alcuin from 
the palace school to the post of abbot of the monastery 
of St. Martin at Tours, at that time the most richly en- 
dowed religious house in Euro])e. His place at the head 
of the palace school was supplied by an Irish monk 
named Clement. The monasteries in Ireland, as has 
been said, were the refuges of learned men during the 
whole period when the invasions of the barbarians had 
swept nearly every vestige of the old civilization from 
the Continent. A form of Christianity grew up in that 
island, and was propagated by its monks in Scotland and 
the northern part of England, which was peculiar at 
least in this, that it was wholly independent of the au- 
thority of the Roman See. These Irish monks studied 
astronomy in a rational way in order to determine the 
correct time for observing Easter, a subject in those 
days deemed of great importance, and the Irish Church 
differed from the Roman in rerard to the true date 



368 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

of that festival. The Irish monks also studied certain 
of the Greek philosopliers, not merely from a love of 
learning, but also that they might thereby train them- 
selves in those dialectical methods of reasoning of which 
Plato and Zeno, and, above all, Aristotle, had been the 
chief teachers. The clergy of the Roman obedience 
were not then permitted, as I have stated, to study for 
any purpose the profane authors, and this not merely 
because true orthodoxy should be founded on faith and 
not on reason, but because it Avas said that such was the 
antagonism between Paganism and ChrisliTanity that it 
was unbecoming that the praises of Jove and of Christ 
should be spoken even in the same language. 

Charlemagne, as I have had occasion often to say, 
was a man far above his age in general ideas, and was 
not to be governed in his grand scheme of education by 
petty and narrow speculations such as these. Having 
found an Irish monk who really knew something about 
astronomy and was familiar with Greek authors, he hesi- 
tated not, to the great disgust of the orthodox clergy of 
his Empire, with Alcuin at its head, to install Clement 
at once as the chief of the palace school. He builded 
better than he knew, for by this act he was unconsciously 
shaping the course and direction of the higher mediaeval 
education, and beginning a controversy in which for 
ages great men fought on both sides, one party under 
the banner of free inquiry and of reason, and the other 
under that of faith and the authority of the Church. 
We know little of the instructions of Clement of Ireland, 



INFLUENCE OF THE PALACE SCHOOL. 369 



but it is clear from what followed that the Irish school 
of philosophy, which afforded training so unlike that 
given on the Continent, maintained its footing at the 
court of the Carlovingian Emperors during the larger 
portion of the ninth century. This novel system of 
philosophy and dialectics was taught by a succession of 
Irish monks, the chief of w^iom was the famous elohn 
Scotus Erigena, who became attached to the court in the 
time of Charles the Bald, the grandson of Charlemagne. 
Of his special influence I shall speak hereafter; but the 
point now^ requiring our attention is this, that the period 
during which the narrow, technical, and almost formal 
system of instruction adopted by Alcuin had sufficed 
for all wants had passed, and that a philosophy upon a 
broader basis and with higher aims kindled the zeal of 
scholars. From the palace school at Aix-la-Chapelle, 
after its reorganization, went out pupils who soon be- 
came masters, and who, moving from place to place after 
the manner of that age, and propagating their doctrines, 
spread the love of the new philosophy and gained prose- 
lytes everywhere. Shortly after, the Church schools 
themselves, becoming tired of teaching only grammar 
and arithmetic, were desirous of introducing the study 
of philosophical methods ; renowned philosophers often 
became the heads of these schools, and taught with such 
brilliancy their favorite theories that, although many of 
them became chief dignitaries of the Church, their fame 
with their contemporaries as well as with posterity rests 
upon their having been great teachers, and not upon 



370 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

their having Iield exalted positions in the hierarchy of 
tlie Church or the State. 

The philosophy which these men taught is known 
in history as the Scholastic philosophy, and they as its 
teachers are called Schoolmen. For six hundred years 
this system and method of philosophizing was taught in 
the schools and universities of Western Europe, and was 
regarded as the means of solving the darkest and most 
intricate problems of human life. It has been the fashion 
of modern times to decry this system as a meaningless 
one, and as utterly unfitted for the purpose to which it 
was applied. The terms "scholastic" and "schoolmen" 
have been made terms of opprobrium ; the philosophers 
of the Middle Age have been regarded as blind leaders 
of the blind, and their method of solving the great 
problems of the universe simply as a sort of technical 
jargon without any reality or practical outcome, and 
amounting to hardly more than a mere play on words. 
The schoolmen who were the teachers of the Middle 
Age had, it is said, more to do with making that age 
dark than either the Churchmen or the knights. 

The controversies of the schoolmen and their methods 
have, it is true, been long since forgotten ; and yet it ill 
becomes us as students of history to disdain the investi- 
gation of a system which for so many ages provided the 
intellectual food of Europe. And the very first thing 
which strikes us as we consider it is that, like feudalism, 
it was a universal system, and one which remained in full 
force until the conditions of life in Europe were wholly 



SCHOLASTICISM. 371 

cbaiiged, and hence that there must have been some- 
thing in it which made it suited to the circumstances of* 
the time in which it was supported by this general 
opinion. I shall endeavor to give some account of this 
mysterious subject, well aware of the difficulties in the 
way of satisfactorily explaining it. In the first place, 
then, it is to be regarded simply as a method, or agency, 
or instrument, — an organon, as the word is used by Aris- 
totle and Bacon, — of teaching the truth. It was not in 
itself, at least at first, a science, but a, method agreed 
upon by those who held differing views on abstract sub- 
jects, by which the correctness of those views might be 
ascertained, and a standard established by which their 
differences could be measured. The usual explanation of 
scholasticism is that its object w^as to reconcile revelation 
with reason, to establish the truth of the Christian mys- 
teries by the syllogistic form of reasoning adopted from 
Aristotle. Of course it is true that all schoolmen were 
ecclesiastics, and that there were certain dogmas of 
the Church concerning the being and nature of God, 
the Trinity, predestination, free will, and the like, which 
were often explained and defended by them in the syl- 
logistic form ; but the priest and the philosopher were 
never merged in each other. The sacraments and other 
Christian mysteries remained always in the province 
of theology, while philosophy was permitted and en- 
•couraged by the Church to investigate the vast field 
outside. In all times and under all systems of religion 
both theologians and philosophers have agreed that tlie 



372 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

nature of the Deity may be a proper object of scientific 
study. 

How, then, did this system grow up, and how did it 
become the universal solvent of all the great problems 
which disturbed the humau mind in the Middle Age? 
The first step was taken in the schools formed after the 
pattern of Charlemagne's palace schooL Dialectics or 
logic, it will be remembered, was one of the subjects 
taught in the trivium, or the elementary department of 
instruction in the schools. It was there used for the pur- 
pose of explaining the meaning of words, — not merely 
their definition, which was more properly the province 
of grammar and rhetoric, but the relations of words to 
each other, and even their hidden meanings. The result 
that followed from this practice is a striking illustration 
of the truth of the statement that ^^ words are things.'' 
Take for instance the word " Will." How much must 
one know if he comprehends fully the meaning of that 
little word ! — about free-will, for instance, its relations 
with foreknowledge, the limitations of its power, its re- 
sponsibility, etc. And so with all words which repre- 
sent abstract ideas : to know them thoroughly is to know 
clearly the things they represent. But, more than this, 
they sought to know the true logical relations of words 
with other words; and hence a rudimentary idea of science 
grew up which is nothing more than such a classification 
of our knowledge that we may understand the true rela- 
tion of cause and effect. Hence logic, which sought to 
establish a true co-ordination of our ideas by giving us 



SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. 373 

an accurate knowledge of the meaning and relations of 
the words used in expressing them, soon became not 
merely the master-science but the only science, because 
it had drawn all the others to itself. It was the key 
which unlocked them all. At best the others, such as 
grammar, arithmetic, geometry, taught men facts ; logic 
was the true bond which united them all together and 
showed the relations of each to the other. 

It was in the endeavor, first, to explain the mean- 
ing of all abstract terms and their relations, and, sec- 
ondly, to defend the conclusions so reached by tlie syl- 
logistic process, that the scholastic philosophy was led 
into those refined and subtile distinctions of the meaning 
of words or terms and their relations which make it so 
difficult for us moderns to comprehend them, and which 
have led many to think that the conclusions the school- 
men reached with such painstaking ingenuity and learn- 
ing were, after all, of no practical value. The difficulty 
was, as we can see clearly now, in attributing an exag- 
gerated or false value to the dialectical method as an in- 
strument for reaching truth. The practice was to place 
all questions, great and small, in those days, in the cru- 
cible of logic to test their meaning, and to ascertain 
whether their elements could be formed into a proper 
syllogism. If the process seems at first only a method 
of constructing ingenious puzzles, we are to remember 
that the greatest problems of human life were solved, 
as well as a knowledge of the mysteries of the Divine 
government reached, to the satisfaction of some of the 



374 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 



acutest intellects the world has ever known, by tlils 
method of accurately defining the terms in which, by 
the rules of logic, they were supposed to be properly 
expressed, and then deducing the relations between them 
growing out of terms so defined. 

In pursuing this method of ascertaining the meaning 
of words or terms and their relations, the schoolmen soon 
discovered that words were things; and shortly after- 
wards arose the celebrated controversy about " univer- 
sals," which was the technical name given to certain words 
expressing general ideas. The question was whether 
the word which denoted a general idea or a " universal" 
presented a real object to the mind, a true subsisting 
entity outside the mere abstract conception of it by the 
intellect. For instance, what does the word '^ humanity'^ 
in its logical sense mean ? Is it a thing really and ob- 
jectively existing, or is it a mere word to mark our gen- 
eral conception of the human race? Those who believed 
that universals or general ideas were objective realities 
were called Realists^ while those who denied the real 
existence of universals, and who asserted that nothing 
actually is but the individual, that of which the senses 
take cognizance, were called Nominalists. The quarrel 
between these parties lasted until the time of the Ke- 
naissance, when the fame of Plato, who was the first 
Eealist, superseded that of Aristotle, the great master 
of the Nominalist schoolmen. Into the merits of the 
controversy I cannot pretend to enter. It is very clear, 
however, that it was regarded by the parties as something 



ARISTOTLE AND THE SCHOOLMEN. 375 

much more serious than a quarrel about mere words. 
The Church watched its progress with the greatest jeal- 
ousy, fearing the rationalism of such men as Erigena, 
Roscelin, and Abelard. The gravest questions of the- 
ology, as well as those which seem to us most fanciful 
and trivial, became involved in the debate. The school- 
men, with their peculiar logic, did not hesitate even 
to explore the nature of the Trinity. Such was the 
acrimony of the rival parties in this logical conflict that 
the theology of the time seems to have fallen into the 
hands of contentious disputants, and its dogmas became 
an occasion of strife instead of objects of faith. 

Aristotle ruled paramount in these controversies, and 
under his supposed authority the schoolmen tested the 
strength of their philosophy by its power to explain 
the true character of universals, — in other words, to 
solve that question which in one form or another is to 
be found at the basis of all metaphysical speculation, 
ancient and modern, — viz., whether our conceptions of 
things are merely the result of combinations in our 
own minds, or whether they inhere in the nature of the 
objects presented to our senses. To work out the 
refined and subtile distinctions involved in the logical 
method was not only the constant and most cherished 
occupation for ages of the best-trained intellects, but, 
what perhaps was even more remarkable, the young 
men who flocked, literally by tens of thousands, to 
the universities, not merely of* Paris and of Oxford, 
but everywhere throughout Europe where learning was 



376 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

taught, came to listen to lectures and to hear disputa- 
tions upon these abstruse subjects by men whose fame 
was great because they were great schoolmen. The 
enthusiasm of the young men of that time for this 
scholastic philosophy it is not easy to explain; and I 
am sure it would be difficult to imitate it now, even had 
we Scotus Erigena, Roscelin, and Abelard on the one 
side denying the reality of " universals," and Anselm 
and St. Bernard on the other affirming it. 

This enthusiasm, and the multitudes who were moved 
by it, became the immediate cause of the founding of 
modern universities. Of these, the University of Paris 
and that of Bologna were the oldest. The first became 
for many centuries so celebrated as a school of theology 
that it was known as the first school of the Church in 
Europe, while that at Bologna was equally distinguished 
as a place for the study of the Roman law. Towards 
the close of the twelfth century the University of Paris 
was fully organized by the establishment of the four 
faculties of arts or philosophy, theology, the canon 
law, and medicine. The king, Philip Augustus, in 
the year 1200 (and his example was followed by his 
successors), granted the university exemption from the 
jurisdiction of the ordinary tribunals and from taxa- 
tion, while the Pope, Nicholas IV., gave full authority 
to its professors to teach and manage schools throughout 
Christendom and to assume the title of doctors. The 
number of the students is said to have been at one time 
equal to that of tlie citizens, and to have reached during 



UNIVERSITY ORGANIZATION. 377 

the fifteenth century thirty thousand. This vast number 
of students made it necessary that for the purposes of 
instruction and discipline there should be a system of 
organization^ and that adopted was the division of the 
students and professors into nations, in which their posi- 
tion depended upon the country from which they came, 
and not upon the faculty whose instructions they at- 
tended. Each nation formed a distinct body, composed 
of the professors and students from a particular district, 
and the procurator or head of the nation was elected 
by this body. All the nations united in the election of 
the liead or rector of the university, thus establishing 
that fundamental principle in university government 
that its president should be chosen by those who have 
the best opportunity of knowing the qualifications of 
the person proposed, and his fitness for performing the 
duties devolving upon him. I call this principle a 
fundamental one, for it prevails to this day throughout 
Europe, and it is worthy of remark that it is so reason- 
able in itself, and has been so approved by universal 
experience, that it remains the only method of gov- 
erning human beings which has been unchanged by 
all the changes of the last seven hundred years. 

The system was, as may be inferred, one of training and 
mental discipline rather than one designed to impart a 
knowledge of facts. The instruction given in the faculty 
of arts, and later in that of theology, — the principal fac- 
ulties, as I have said, of the University of Paris, — com- 
prised those subjects contained in what were technically 

32* 



378 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

called tlie trivium and the quachivium, the first or ele- 
mentary course embracing grammar, logic, and rhetoric, 
the second or advance course music, arithmetic, geome- 
try, and astronomy. The number seven had a mystical 
significance In the Middle Age. There were seven car- 
dinal virtues, seven deadly sins, seven sacraments, etc. ; 
and perhaps for this reason there were said to be seven 
fundamental branches of human knowledge. 
. But probably nothing was very thoroughly taught, 
according to our modern notions, save the scholastic 
l)hIlosophy, esi^ecially in its application to theology. 
The method of teaching did not differ at the University 
of Paris from that which had been employed by cele- 
brated private teachers previous to Its establishment. It 
is not easy to account for the vast multitude of stu- 
dents who crowded around celebrated schoolmen who 
expounded their system, whether in the university, or, 
as in the case of Abelard, in a secluded place in the 
country, whither he had retired, hoping — as it proved, 
in vain— that his lectures would be less crowded by en- 
thusiastic pupils. It is certainly a strange spectacle of 
the life of the Middle Age to find its intense intellectual 
life consumed by a violent quarrel about the reality of 
^' universals/^ and to find the educated men of the time, 
not only at Paris but at the centres of instruction every- 
where throughout Europe, disputing with each other, as 
Realists and Nominalists, with as much mutual bitterness 
and hate as those who were fighting in another sphere 
under the party names of Guelph and Ghibellne. 



UNIVERSITY OF PARIS. 379 

In the absence of printed books the insti-iiction given 
by these teachers was necessarily oral. The students in 
these universities had little other aid than their note- 
books to enable them to prepare for their examination 
for the degree of Master of Arts, the principal value of 
which consisted in the license to teach which accom- 
panied it. The University of Paris was a power of the 
first magnitude throughout Europe during the Middle 
Age. In France it was the counsellor of her kings in 
their many disputes with the Popes, and its arbitrament 
was sought and its decision regarded as final in all ques- 
tions of conflict between the Church and the State. 
Philippe le Bel consulted it on the question of jurisdiction 
between himself and the Pope; and Charles V., with a 
just estimate of the glory which this renowned establisli- 
ment had brought to his throne, gave it the title of fdlc 
ainee des rois de France j and rank and precedence in the 
kingdom immediately after the princes of the blood. 
The university was regarded as the stronghold of ortho- 
doxy ; but it did not hesitate to speak in the tone of 
authority to Benedict XIII. when he was elected Pope, 
urging upon him the necessity of reform in the Church. 
In the Council of Constance, in the fifteenth century, 
where a most honest effort was made to bring about a 
reform of the Church by means within itself, the leading 
spirit was Gerson, who was the president of the Council, 
being at the same time delegate of the University of 
Paris and ambassador of the King of France. When 
we hear the Middle Age spoken of as the Dark Ages, as 



380 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

the period of arbitrary and unchecked force, never let 
us forget tliat at no epoch in the world's history, ancient 
or modern, did scholars more worthily fill their true 
position as the guides of the world, and never lias their 
authority been more generally recognized or more readily 
obeyed in all that concerns the highest interests of man- 
kind, than in these self-same Dark Ages, as they are 
called. 

AVhile philosophy and theology were thus occupying 
the attention of the acutest intellects of Europe at Paris 
and at the other universities in France and in England, 
another subject, a knowledge of which was to have a 
profound influence upon the destinies of Europe, was 
being taught at Bologna in Italy, and that was the 
Roman civil law. The foundation of the celebrated 
university at that place is said to have been coeval with 
that at Paris. The general organization in both institu- 
tions w^as the same, but (as it often happened), while Paris 
became the headquarters of the schoolmen, Bologna was 
the resort of students of the civil law, or civilians as 
they were called. The revival of this study is only 
another of the countless proofs we meet with of the 
permanent influence of the Roman civilization. As the 
Roman law, known to the students of the Middle Age 
only as embodied in the Pandects and in the Code of 
Justinian, was supposed to be the Instrument which had 
been actually used for governing the world by a system 
of Imperial despotism, the German Emperors when 
they sought to make themselves in their heterogeneous 



STUDY OF CIVIL AND CANON LAW. 381 

dominions successors to the Imperial Caesars desired to 
avail themselves of the same method of administration 
to produce the same results. At the same time and at 
the same place grew up a disposition to study the new 
science called the Canon law, which was a system of 
Church law founded upon the decrees of Councils and 
of Popes, and forming the basis for its orderly adminis- 
tration. To Bologna, as to Paris, students flocked in 
crowds. In the middle of the fourteenth century the 
number was over thirteen thousand. Whether they all 
became civil or canon lawyers I am unable to tell. The 
vast attendance of students in the diiferent departments 
of these universities presents, too, a problem in mediaeval 
life which I have never been able satisfactorily to solve. 
How they all managed to spend the five or six years in 
residence which were required before they presented 
themselves for examination for a degree, what was the 
nature of that examination, whence the students came, 
and where they went after being graduated, are all ques- 
tions which are difficult to answer. 

We are impressed, upon a survey of mediaeval educa- 
tion, with the absence in it of any instruction in either 
natural or applied science. We measure in these days 
our civilization so entirely by our knowledge of the 
forces of nature and our control over them for our own 
purposes, that we are naturally inclined to think that 
scholars must have been really very ignorant in those 
ages. But we must remember that the leaders of the 
age are to be measured by a different standard, when 



382 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

the object of education was mental training, and not the 
acquisition of knowledge. It is most true that revela- 
tion and authority were the bases of all speculations in 
the Middle Age, as scepticism and individualism are 
those of inquiries which have proved so fruitful in re- 
sults in modern times. The question now is not which 
is the best or the truest system (and no one system of 
education can be the best for all times), but why such 
a one as I have described was necessarily the outcome 
of the peculiar circumstances of the life of the Middle 
Age. 

There is a link which binds the education of that ag-e 
to that which has become the popular form in our own 
day, just as there are links which connect such institu- 
tions as feudalism and the medlseval Church with our 
modern civilization. If education now means chiefly 
the acquisition of a knowledge of facts, we may find In 
the gradual introduction of the Arabian philosophy and 
Arabian science, es})eclally in the methods of studying 
the science of medicine in the mediaeval universities, illus- 
trations that our own methods are not wholly original. 
I speak of Arabian science ; but it should be more prop- 
erly called Greek science as studied and applied by 
Arabian philosophers. In the early days of Moham- 
medanism in Syria, all the works of Aristotle (not 
merely his Logic), as well as the treatises on medicine 
of Hippocrates and Galen, and of the Alexandrian as- 
tronomers, were accessible to the learned men among 
the Arabian conquerors, and were made the subject of 



STUDY OF MEDICINE. 383 

profound study. A rational system of medicine and 
astronomy derived from the Greeks came thus to the 
knowledge of the Saracens, and was carried by them 
wherever the conquering arms of the Prophet led tliem. 
In this way the extraordinary development of the ma- 
terial civilization of the Arabs in Spain during their 
ascendency there is accounted for. It was impossible to 
hide the light of science such as the Arabs taught in 
Spain, and it soon began to shine in the dark places of 
Christian Europe. As in Syria of old, so in France and 
in other parts of Christendom philosophy stole in under 
the protection of medicine. ^'' It was,'' says a grea^ writer, 
"as physicians that the famous Arabian philosophers, 
as well as some Jews, acquired great fame and authority. 
There is not among them a philosopher who had not 
some connection with medicine, nor a physician who had 
not some connection wi^h philosophy. The translators 
of the most famous philosophers, Averroes and Avicenna, 
were physicians. Metaphysics only followed in the train 
of physical science." The faculty of medicine in the uni- 
versities, which had hitherto been somewhat neglected in 
Western Europe, became under the teaching of the Ara- 
bian doctrines one of the most important of the depart- 
ments of instruction, and that at Montpellier and the 
school at Salerno were as crowded with medical students 
as the University of Paris with schoolmen, or that of 
Bologna with civilians or canonists. The old scholastic 
philosophy could not escape the contagion of the methods 
of physical investigation used in the study of medicine. 



384 MED LEVA L HISTORY. 

Gradually the influence of these methods made itself 
felt in the universities, and, when it became apparent, the 
alarm of the orthodox and of the Church authorities led 
them in vain so to order the teaching of the professors 
that the very timid doubts which had been expressed 
in some quarters concerning the claims of the Church 
should be forever silenced. An attempt was made of 
the most strenuous kind to place the whole instruction 
in the University of Paris in the hands of the Domin- 
icans and Franciscans, hoping thereby that this old 
stronghold of orthodoxy should be preserved to the 
Churcl:^^ This attempt failed ; but these orders excluded 
from the universities were not idle as champions of the 
faith. They produced the five great modern schoolmen 
whose special work it was to do what it has been often 
erroneously said was the duty of all, — viz., to reconcile 
revelation and the authority of , the Church with human 
reason by Aristotelian methods more fully understood. 

Scholasticism at the last, however, from the prodigious 
mental activity which it kept up, became a tacit universal 
insurrection against authority : it was the swelling of 
the ocean before the storm. It began to assign bounds 
to that which had been the universal all-embracing do- 
main of theology. It was a sign of a great awakening 
of the human mind when theologians thought it both 
their duty and their privilege to philosophize. There 
was a vast waste of intellectual labor, but still it was 
intellectual labor, and, as we shall see, it was not, in the 
end, unfruitful. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE LABORING CLASSES IN THE MIDDLE AGE. 

There is perhaps no more striking contrast between 
modern life and the life of antiquity and of the Middle 
Age than that presented by the different social position 
and influence of those engaged in trade, and especially 
in the industrial and mechanic arts, in the two epochs. 
At the present day, and especially in this country, the 
successful man of business is king, ruling our society 
in nearly all its departments with an authority as un- 
challenged, and often as arbitrary, as that of the most 
despotic sovereign who ever sat on a throne. With 
the natural disposition of mankind to worship success, 
those who become rich in this way are looked upon as 
objects of imitation and envy. Not only so, but the 
methods which they have adopted in becoming rich are 
considered appropriate for the attainment of very dif- 
ferent ends in life from mere money-getting. Self-made 
men, as they are called, — that is, men without any liberal 
training, who have thus become rich by their own exer- 
tions, — are not only the arbiters of trade and leaders in 
social influence, but they are too often the guides in the 
special development of religion, of politics, of education, 

and of benevolence, and, in short, determine not merely 

33 385 



386 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

the ideal to wliich society should aspire, but the methods 
by which it should be reached. 

It may not at once occur to many that this extraordi- 
nary all-pervading power of wealth, and the social con- 
sideration which it gives, are among the most modern 
developments of modern times. There were, of course, 
rich men who were self-made both in antiquity and in 
the Middle Age ; but men grown rich by trade do not 
seem to have been held in honor in either epoch. Their 
want of social consideration and influence is abundantly 
clear from tlie works of the great writers of the time. 
Cicero, for instance, in writing to his son, tells him that 
those who gained their livelihood by mercantile pursuits, 
as well as those who followed the mechanic arts, were 
incapable of any noble sentiment; Avhile Seneca, who 
was one of the two sages of antiquity who, according to 
St. Thomas Aquinas, needed only baptism to procure 
them admission to the Christian's heaven, speaks of the 
useful arts of life as the fitting occupation only of slaves. 
Such is the uniform testimony of writers who have de- 
scribed the condition of Europe down to a period as late 
as that of the Reformation, and even later. 

In this view of life, so strange to us, there was more 
reason than appears on the surface. The source of the 
contempt felt until modern times for those whose lives 
were passed in trade or in industrial labor, as very 
plainly appears, was this, tliat until a period compara- 
tively recent these pursuits were entirely confined to 
slaves or to a servile class. Tlie emancipation of labor, 



LABOR IN ANTIQUITY, 387 

tlien, and its elevation to its condition in our time, when 
we hear so much of its dignity, was the emancipation of 
those who labored from slavery, and from that taint 
which in public opinion in Europe has always aifected 
everything connected with slave labor. The history of 
the laboring classes in Europe is the history of the 
progress of the larger portion of the population from 
slavery to freedom. I have already given a sketch of 
the history of those who, it was said, served the State 
by their swords,, and of those who served it by their 
prayers: I now propose to say something about the 
history of the remaining class, those who preserved it 
by their labor, a subject of far greater dramatic interest, 
in my opinion, than the others. 

We must go to the history of Rome for a knowledge 
of the beginnings of the" laboring class in Europe, just 
as we go there as to the source from which we must 
derive our information concerning the early history of 
the noble and the priestly classes which ruled in the 
mediaeval time. 

The slight esteem in which labor and the useful arts 
were held in the early history of the republic was due 
perhaps originally in some measure to the few wants of 
the people as compared with those of later times. While 
Rome was struggling not for supremacy but for exist- 
ence, she regarded as desirable only those things which 
made good soldiers. She encouraged agriculture because 
it gave her strong recruits for her armies and fed them ; 
but the artisan lived poor and despised in his workshop, 



388 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

with no prospect of bettering his condition. Like all 
classes in Rome, the workmen were enrolled in special or- 
ganizations called collegia^ or trade corporations. Their 
members were few, and were made up of those engaged in 
the commonest handicrafts, such as would be required by 
a people with the simplest wants. All this was changed 
when the Roman armies carried their conquests beyond 
the boundaries of Italy. Sicily, Spain, Africa, and 
Greece were pillaged, after the manner of ancient war- 
fiire, of their richest treasures for the benefit of the Ro- 
man republic, the population of the city, and its armies. 
At once the ancient simplicity of habits was exchanged 
^or the wildest extravagance and luxury. A very large 
portion of the booty of these wars consisted of vast num- 
bers of slaves, many of whom, both male and female, 
especially those who were brought from Greece and 
Syria, were not only persons whom we should now call of 
liberal education, but many of whom also were the most 
skilled artificers then known to the world in all that 
ministers to a taste for refinement, culture, and luxury. 
The work of these slaves soon made Rome a very rich 
city ; but it did not, as may be supposed, elevate the con- 
dition of the native free Roman workman, whose labor 
was brought into competition with that of the slaves 
who had been so highly trained. So hopeless, indeed, 
did the struggle become that it seems to have been 
almost wholly abandoned; and it may be said here 
that one great cause of the final decay of the Roman 
power was the constant use of slaves in increasing 



SLAVES IN ROME. 389 

numbers to the exclusion of free laborers in every 
kind of skilled labor. This practice turned the poorer 
Roman citizens into a hungry mob, crying panem et 
Gircenses, and later it destroyed agriculture iu Italy, and 
with it the free population it nourished, giving up the 
soil to sheep pastures, which could be managed more 
profitably, because more cheaply, by slaves than by free- 
men. Latifundia perdidere Itallam, is the profoundest 
reflection of Pliny the Elder; and these three words, 
according to him, contain the secret of the history of 
the downfall of the Empire. 

The slaves, in vast and increasing numbers, were em- 
ployed in three different ways at Rome. They were 
occupied either in the personal service of their masters, 
manufacturing within the house what was needed for 
its use and adornment, or they were let out to others 
for similar purposes, or they became gladiators in the 
cruel amusements of the amphitheatre. Their skill in 
all the mechanic arts had a deplorable influence upon 
the condition of the free laborers, who became, owing to 
the impossibility of competing with the servile labor, 
the most troublesome and seditious class throughout the 
Empire. Their collegia, wdiich had been originally in- 
tended for their protection, were suppressed as dangerous 
to the State during the great civil and. social wars. They 
were abolished because they had then become asylums 
for the discontented ; and this policy was kept up for 
the same reasons, and from the same fear, by the Em- 
perors for nearly a century. Later, the utter prostration 
' 33* 



390 MEDIJ£VAL HISTORY. 

of industry made it necessary to reorganize these cor- 
porations, with the hope of finding employment for the 
vast mass of proletarii whom the State, from motives 
of safety if not of humanity, was called upon to pro- 
vide for. 

In the third century, the conquests ceasing, the num- 
ber of slaves grew less; the larger portion of the working 
class, however, were, although nominally free, the chil- 
dren of slaves or of freedmen ; and the collegia, which 
were originally designed to protect their industry by 
giving them a monopoly, begame a powerful means 
in the hands of the government for controlling them. 
This class, even when its labor was most necessary, was 
still without social position or influence in the Empire. 
It was composed chiefly of three groups, all, of course, 
free, or at least not slaves : 1st, those who worked in the 
public service in the construction of roads and buildings, 
and in preparing the material necessary for the equip- 
ment of the army ; 2d, those who cultivated the public 
lands of the Empire in order to provide the food with 
which the government undertook to supply the mob of 
Rome, the specially dangerous class of the Empire at 
that time; and, 3d, those who worked at any trade 
which they preferred. 

The constitution .of these collegia interests us specially 
because they were the model upon which the jurandes 
and glides of later times were formed. The privileges 
which were attached to them do not seem to have com- 
pensated for the obligations which were forced upon 



ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. 391 

their members. They had the monopoly of production, 
each in the work of its own particular collegium; they 
were, at least for a long time, exempt from the military 
service of the State, as well as from being forced to as- 
sume the doubtful and costly honors of the curia ; but 
such exemptions were considered as marks of ignominy, 
and not as privileges conferred. There was among these 
workmen none of that indivklual liberty which, begetting 
rivalry and enterprise, we regard, in modern times at 
least, as the strongest incentive to skill in one's calling. 

In the Roman Empire every one was bound, as if by 
a chain, to the special work in which he was engaged. 
The colonist was tied to the land, the public officer to 
his charge, the cwrialis to his municipium, the merchant 
to his stop, and the workman to his collegium. If there 
was any liberty of action, it belonged not to the indi- 
vidual, but to the corporation of which he formed part, 
which both in law and in fact absorbed the workman. 

This method of organizing labor, which became at last 
only an ingenious system of keeping a troublesome ele- 
ment of the population in due order and subordination, 
was one of the characteristic peculiarities of the Roman 
administration, and it was swept away by the invasions. 
Industry upon any large scale was, of course, destroyed 
by this terrible calamity, and there was nowhere any 
recuperative power : the individual had long before per- 
ished in the embraces of the State. One of the first 
results of the invasions, so far as the condition of the 
laborer was concerned, was to bring him back again into 



392 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 



that state of slavery from which he had been at least 
measurably emancipated by the system of the Roman 
collegia. The towns in Ganl through which the in- 
vaders passed were filled with workmen, and there were 
among them many, no doubt, nominally freemen ; but 
the invaders took little heed of the free or the enslaved 
condition of the working class, and made them all, indis- 
criminately, captives, — prisoners of war, — and therefore 
they all became slaves. The conquerors soon became 
embarrassed by the number of their captives, and even 
by their skill in handicraft ; for the Teutonic invaders 
had few of the wants which the luxurious and civilized 
Romans had felt when they had forced their captured 
slaves to minister to them. Thus not only in Gaul, 
but wherever Roman civilization had taken root, these 
slaves were very much in the way, for in the new life 
which the Teutonic invasion introduced there seemed no 
place for them. Hence at no period of history has there 
been greater suffering on the part of an industrious and 
intelligent population of skilled laborers than when it 
was found that, as there was no longer any demand for 
their skill, they must engage in the rudest and most 
unaccustomed labor as slaves under barbarous task- 
masters. 

So much for the trade organizations in the cities of the 
Empire. The position of the rural or agricultural laborer 
was somewhat diflPerent. He was called colonus. Men of 
this class were not slaves ; in this sense, at least, that they 
were not regarded by the law as mere chattels. They 



SLAVES BECOME BOND-LABORERS. 393 

might serve in the army, and contract a lawful marriage ; 
and a slave could do neither. But they were bound to 
the estate of the proj^rietor on which they lived, adscripti 
glehm; they were subject to corporal punishment, and had 
no redress at law for the hard treatment of their mas- 
ters ; but, on the other hand, the owner could not sepa- 
rate them from the domain and sell them, and their 
tenure was secure on the payment of a fixed rent. At 
the epoch of the invasions, then, the mass of the rural 
population throughout the Empire were bond-laborers, 
not slaves in the strict legal sense. Let us mark the 
transition from the Roman colonus to the Teutonic serf 
or villein ; for the last relation grew out of the first as a 
consequence of the invasions. 

In the first place, the Roman laborer had, it is true, 
been in dependence upon the owner of tlie soil and at- 
tached thereto, but he was also the subject of a central 
general government whose laws he was bound to obey. 
But among all nations of German blood, power origi- 
nally rested upon two foundations : first, upon the pos- 
session of land ; and, secondly, upon distinction in rank. 
As a result of the invasions, the central general govern- 
ment being destroyed, the proprietor of the land became 
the sovereign of all those who dwelt upon it. Sovereignty 
and property, therefore, were vested in the same hands, 
and the laborer had no guarantee against oppression in 
the provisions of a State law which was equally binding 
upon him and his master. This was the first step made 
in the change of the condition of the bond-laborer to 



394 MEDIyEVAL HISTORY. 

that of the Middle Age serf. But it was precisely this 
arbitrary and capricious despotism, which was a charac- 
teristic feature of the feudal system, which rendered that 
system so oppressive to the laboring man of the mediaeval 
period. 

It is important to observe that in those days of oppres- 
sion the complaints of the patient workmen were directed 
not so much against the exactions of the lords, excessive 
as they were, as against the uncertain and capricious 
character of those demands ; in other words, to the ab- 
sence of contracts which would clearly settle their mutual 
relations. The struggle between the laboring class, both 
in town and in country, against the noble class, after the 
lands had been divided among them, and during the 
whole continuance of the feudal system, was a struggle 
therefore not so much to diminish the amount of service 
rendered the lords as to settle clearly the nature of that 
service and to make it fixed and certain. The abolition 
of vUlenage or serfdom was merely the substitution of a 
contract for fixed service for the arbitrary and capricious 
demands of the feudal superior ; and the freedom of the 
towns or communes^ as it was called, was not a freedom 
from paying taxes to the lord, but freedom from being 
pillaged at will by him, — a privilege purchased, as we 
have seen, by the payment of a certain sum of money 
mutually agreed upon. As serfdom had been substituted 
for the colonatus, contracts between the lord and his vas- 
sal took the place of the services formerly rendered. 
The change in both cases was due largely to economic 



INFLUENCE OF ECONOMIC MOTIVES. 395 

considerations, and when such contracts could be made 
and kept, it is evident that the chains of feudal depend- 
ence were becoming loosened ; and this formed, as we 
sliall see, the stepping-stone by which the laboring class 
reached at last, after the severest struggles, the condition 
of absolute freedom. 

Out of the condition caused by these changes grew 
that class of farmers, or peasant proprietors, or freeliold- 
ing yeomen, as they have been differently called in dif- 
ferent countries of Europe, which forms, as has been 
said, the backbone of modern society. Observe the pro- 
cess by which all this was brought about. It was due 
in a very small measure to the influence of that sentiment 
of piety and benevolence which has sometimes taught 
men the injustice of holding their fellow-men. in bond- 
age, or even to the example of the Church itself in 
dealing with its own serfs, but rather to purely selfish 
and economic considerations. It was a scheme on the 
part of the lords to secure from their estates larger and 
more certain revenues than they had previously yielded, 
and was founded on the principle that in every way, as 
well for the laborer as for the master, free labor v/as 
more profitable than slave labor. 

These contracts for fixed rents and services seem to have 
been extended gradually to all rural laborers, whether 
technically bond or free, so greatly had they proved to be 
of advantage to the lords. Thus we see now clearly that, 
out of the pure selfishness of the lords, a system, which 
was intended by them only to increase their wealth and 



396 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

power, in the end really became one out of which grew 
the first and the most permanent cliaracteristic of mod- 
ern freedom, — namely, the right of each man to sell his 
labor at his own price. Not only this, but, in the uni- 
versal greed o'f the lords to increase their wealth, slaves 
had been contracted with on the same footing as other 
laborers, so that practically an equality of condition 
was established between these classes, and slavery, 
Avhich, in one form or another, had been the normal 
condition of the larger portion of the human race in all 
previous history, gradually died out in Western Europe, 
simply because it was not profitable, but not before giv- 
ing birth to the modern freeman. 

These movements, which extended over all that part 
of Europe which had been occupied by the Teutonic 
invaders, and which gradually, during several centuries, 
were changing its social condition, have always seemed 
to me among the most striking illustrations in history 
of that Divine providence which makes not merely the 
wrath but the selfishness and wickedness of man to 
praise Him. This mighty revolution, the results of 
which were, of course, wholly unexpected, was so silent 
in its movement that we can scarcely tell when it began. 
But we do know that its immediate cause was the abso- 
lute necessity of raising money in large sums to enable 
the kings to prosecute their wars. Thus, we find in 
England in the early part of the fourteenth century 
Edward III. "selling manumissions,^' as it is politely 
described, to the serfs on the royal demesne, and in 



WORKING CLASS IN THE TOWNS. 397 

France, about the same time, Louis X. (le Hutiii, 
Headstrong) issuing his famous edict by which his serfs 
were permitted to buy from him their freedom at a 
round price. The example of the kings was soon fol- 
lowed by the great vassals of the crown, with wdiat 
effect on the condition of the serfs we have seen. This 
was the starting-point not merely in industrial freedom 
for the serfs and laborers throughout Europe, but, in 
England at least, the beginning of their political free- 
dom also. Such laws as the Statute of Laborers, which 
professed to regulate arbitrarily the rate of wages, or the 
Statute of Apparel, which undertook to prescribe the 
cost of the dress of the laboring class, however much 
they might have been adapted to serfs, who held every- 
thing at the mercy or caprice of the lord, were entirely 
out of place as a mode of ruling free laborers, as the 
government found to its cost in various uprisings of the 
population. 

In regard to the working classes in the towns, and 
their relations to the governing power, there are three 
things to be considered separately if we wish to get an 
accurate idea of their condition. There is, first, the na- 
ture of the government of the towns themselves, which 
at an early period, comparatively, was withdrawn from 
the feudal lords and vested in the local magistrates; 
secondly, there were the trade corporations in the towns, 
one for each principal branch of industry, whose mem- 
bers were the sole electors of the town magistrates; 

thirdly, there were the glides or confreries, composed 

34 



398 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

of artisans, usually, but not always nor necessarily, 
forming part of the trade corporations. The mediaeval 
life in the towns rested upon this threefold basis. Out 
of this city life, and by virtue of the educ^ation and ex- 
perience he gained there, came that prominent figure in 
our time, — the modern skilled workman. 

I have described in a previous chapter the manner in 
which the towns secured their freedom from feudal 
servitude and the transfer of the local government to 
their own magistrates. The question now presents itself 
how this change of the governing class affected the traders 
and mechanics, the hourcjeoide as well as the workmen, 
who had no vote in the choice of their rulers. Accord- 
ing to Mr. Green, the rights of self-government, of free 
speech in free meeting, of equal justice by one's equals, 
were brought safely through the feudal tyranny in Eng- 
land by the traders and shopkeepers of these towns, 
organized as they were after they became free from 
feudal servitude. It seems to me that the claim is 
somewhat too broad ; for, while unquestionably this 
organization produced much political activity in a cer- 
tain class, it was so narrow and contracted in its scope 
that it concerned itself very little with the interests of 
the larger portion of the inhabitants. The commune 
(which was the technical name of a freed city in France) 
had its own revenues, raised by means of taxation and 
of loans. The magistrates were generally chosen by 
the members of the trade corporations only. The kings 
were favorable to the establishment of free cities upon 



GOVERNMENT OF FREE TOWNS. 399 

the lauds of their great vassals, and frequently aided the 
townsmen in their efforts to secure their exemption from 
feudal servitude, with the object, however, of lessening 
the power of the feudal lords against the crown. On 
their own royal domains they discouraged the establish- 
ment of free cities, lest the inhabitants might be thus with- 
drawn from their absolute control. Wherever, however, 
a free town was created, there the political education of 
the citizen, by means of his participation in the govern- 
ment, began. In this way, both in France and in Eng- 
land, the power of that class which had, in the end, so 
large a share in the government of both countries, — a 
class composed in each of the towns of the principal 
traders and mechanics, and called in England burgesses, 
and in France la bourgeoisie or tlers-etaf, — took deep root. 
The organization of the town corporations was the means 
by which this class entered upon political life, and it thus, 
took a long step towards acquiring that social position 
and influence which it has ever since retained. 

What, then, were the ideas, what was the policy, which 
guided these town governments in the exercise of their 
functions ? The best answer is to be found in this con- 
sideration, that the political system in the towns was 
founded upon citizenship, acquired only by virtue of 
membership in some one of the trade corporations exist- 
ing in them. From the beginning it had some of the 
features of an oligarchy. It was when the inhabitants 
were working industriously and trying to accumulate 
■ property that they felt most keenly the feudal oppres- 



400 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

sion of their seigneurs and strove to form these gilcles, 
or corps de metiers^ as they were called in France, for 
their mutual protection. The motive of the desire for 
the freedom of the towns was the security of their pos- 
sessions ; and the money to purchase that freedom from 
the lords came from the tradesmen, who wished to insure 
their property by doing away with any pretext for ar- 
bitrary acts. Hence the first thing done by these free 
towns was to adopt measures, after their own peculiar 
fashion, to protect the rights of labor. And these rights 
were not at all the rights belonging in common to all 
workmen, but the particular rights and privileges of cer- 
tain workmen formed into trade corporations within the 
town, not unlike, in many respects, our modern trade- 
unions. These rights were claimed and strenuously 
defended for centuries against any interference from 
outside the town, and were in no way founded upon any 
theory of the equality of all workmen, but were rather 
regarded in the nature of privileges. The avowed policy 
was everywhere to establish monopolies in the fullest 
sense of the word, to maintain a discrimination against 
those of the non-privileged class, both outside and in- 
side the town. Their constant efforts, as long as they 
remained self-governing, were thus directed to the special 
protection of those of the inhabitants who were members 
(if the trade corporations, and this was done by main- 
t.iining their exclusive right to work within the town, 
by jealously guarding against the intrusion of strangers 
into the trades carried on there, and, in short, by every 



EDUCATION OF THE WORKMAN, 401 

measure which made the labor of those they represented 
more profitable. They did not even hesitate to reduce 
the number of the workmen, so as to make the gains of 
those who had the exclusive privilege of work greater. 

For all practical purposes, then, the government of 
the free tow^ns was merely the government of the trades 
forming their constituency, and their policy was a policy 
of trading privilege and monopoly. While this policy, 
perhaps, was necessary for their own protection against 
the lawlessness of the time, and while no doubt it 
taught the lesson which is the first to be learned in a 
popular government, the habit of mutual aid for mutual 
protection, yet it is none the less true that the system 
was wholly out of sympathy with that generous recog- 
nition of the universal rights of man, as such, to free- 
dom, which is the most characteristic and fruitful truth 
of our own times. 

On what may be called the educational side the gov- 
ernment of free cities had some important advantages. 
Its policy of the jealous exclusion of strangers from the 
trades of the town made it necessary that those trades 
should be so organized that their members should pro- 
duce good work, and that they should come, with that 
object in view, under the strictest discipline. Each of 
the trade glides was provided with an elaborate organi- 
zation to effect this purpose. The members were divided, 
as a general rule, into three classes, — the apprentices, the 
workmen, and the masters. The apprentices, who were 

of a limited number fand usually the sons of the work- 

34* 



402 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

c 

men or of the masters only were admitted to that posi- 
tion), were most carefully trained and instructed in their 
particular art, or mystery, as it was called. No one was 
allowed to pass from a lower grade to a liigher in the 
gilde without the strictest examination, not merely as to 
his capacity as a workman, but as to his moral character 
also. Those who aspired after this examination to the 
place of master-workmen in any particular craft were 
obliged not only, as I have said, to have passed a long 
period of severe apprenticeship, but were also required 
before their admission to the full privilege of a master 
to produce a specimen of their skill in their particular 
art (called in France a clief-d^oeuvre), which was rigor- 
ously criticised and often found deficient by the exam- 
ining board, composed of the chiefs of the company. 
The result of all this education was to produce, neces- 
sarily, thoroughly skilled workmen in numbers probably 
greater than any other system of the organization of 
labor has been able to do. Again, every piece of work 
made by any member of the craft at any time, no matter 
what was his grade in the company, was subjected before 
it was offered for sale to a minute and thorough inspec- 
tion by officers of the body. One obvious result of such 
a system was to maintain among the artisans, members 
of the same gilde, a strong feeling of pride in their 
work and of attachment to the company which protected 
them in it. But it may be readily inferred that this 
sentiment was not confined in its influence upon the 
workman merely to his special position as such. It no 



GILDES AND CONFRERIES. 403 

doubt nourished in him some of the most important 
characteristics of the true citizen, such as love of in- 
dustry, and personal independence, and city pride ; and 
all this is to be considered as a compensating circum- 
stance when we remember how completely the system 
Avas based upon the monopoly and exclusive privilege 
of the few. 

There was another peculiarity which grew out of the 
government of the free cities by means of these trading 
corporations, which had an immense influence upon city 
life during \\\q Middle Age. Inse})arab]y associated 
with each of these trade companies, although not always 
forming part of it, was a charitable organization for the 
benefit of its members, called in England a glide ^ and in 
France a confrerie. The principle of these organizations, 
which was that of the mutual aid and protection of its 
members, is among the oldest and most permanent ideas 
of the Teutonic race, and was in full operation for cer- 
tain purposes long before free cities or trade corporations 
were thought of. In the days before the invasions 
societies existed in Germany and the jSTorth of Europe 
which were called glides. They were so called because 
the word signifies a feast, given at the common expense 
of the society whose members partook of it, and at these 
feasts it was the custom for those present to take an oath 
to aid and protect eacli other. Here we see the first 
germ of that spirit of association and of mutual and 
voluntary helpfulness which has always distinguished, 
and to this day distinguishes, the Teutonic from the 



404 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

Latin races. The aid and protection which these glides 
were organized to aiFord were not of that kind which 
their successors were called upon to give. The ancient 
Germans, of course, had no mechanic arts and no com- 
mercial occupations; but in the absence of anything like 
law or public order in those rude days they felt the 
need of seeking by combination with their comrades that 
protection for their persons and their property which their 
nominal chief could not or would not give them. The 
weak, therefore, associated themselves with the strong to 
make a common resistance to oppression; they bound 
themselves to each other by a solemn oath ; they chose 
their leaders, and, when they became Christians, a patron 
saint; they ate and drank together at certain fixed pe- 
riods; and, emboldened by their numbers, they asserted 
their power and became in time themselves the lawless 
oppressors of others. 

Out of this ancient and persistent habit of mutual help- 
fulness grew what was known in England's Saxon days 
as frank-jjledge, by which, as I have before explained, 
a responsibility for the acts and offences of each member 
of the society was atttached not primarily to himself but 
to his family, and especially to the glide to which he 
belonged, and this/ran^-p^ec/^/e thus became an important 
instrument of social order in those days. Any member 
could call upon his glide brothers for assistance in case 
of violence and wrong; if falsely accused, they appeared 
in court as his compurgators ; if poor, they supported, 
and when dead they buried him. On the other hand, 



ADVANTAGES OF THE CONFRERIES. 405 

each member was responsible to the gilde, as it was to 
the State, for order and obedience to the laws. A wrong 
of brother against brother was also a wrong against the 
general body of the gilde, and was punished in the last 
resort by expulsion, which left the offender a lawless 
man and an outcast. In its main features this was 
the organization of the trade glides in towns, exclusive 
monopoly of work, and charitable aid to suffering com- 
rades. But we must not forget that while the regu- 
lations of the trade corporations were founded upon the 
selfishness and cupidity of the citizen and the artisan, 
those adopted by the glides or confreries were taught by 
that Divine charity which is the source of the virtues 
of the man and the Christian. 

The members of the confrerie concerned themselves 
about the happiness of their fellow-members, as the 
burghers did about their privileges. When in danger 
they invoked the Divine aid, and caused prayers and 
masses to be said for the benefit not merely of their 
own souls, but for those of their relations, friends, and 
benefactors also. Their object was to make of the mem- 
bers of the gilde, who w^re also generally of the same 
trade, one fiimily united in one faith under the protection 
of the same saint and brought into close relations by 
the enjoyments of a common social intercourse. No one 
of the members was permitted to live in poverty: the 
two opposite principles of pride in their gilde, and the 
charity which was its ruling motive, alike forbade it. 
Like some of our modern institutions of charity which 



406 MEDIJLVAL BIS TORY. 

are the direct and legitimate successors of the gildes of 
the Middle Age, such as the Free-Masons, the Odd- 
Fellows, and kindred associations, a good deal of both 
time and money may liave been wasted in processions, 
regalia, and the like, wliile they Avere carrying on some 
of their work; and yet we must not forget that the great 
motive and object of that work was to aid those whom 
sickness or misfortune had made helpless. When we 
think of the civilizing power in our days among work- 
men of mutual aid societies, we may imagine the influ- 
ence of organizations with the same end in view in the 
Middle Age. Close Union between workers at the same 
trade, social enjoyments in common, innocent recreation 
for the workman who was almost constantly penned up 
in his shop, prayers said in common, a large spirit of 
charity and mutual succor from the ills of poverty, — such 
was the ideal life of workmen belonging to the privileged 
gildes in the free cities of the Middle Age. Could it 
have been made the real and actual life of such work- 
men, what a paradise society would have become ! 

There can be, I think, no doubt that the privileged 
workmen in the towns (not the mass of the laboring 
population outside the gildes, who, as I have said, like 
the 2^^'oktarii or the miserrima plebs of Rome, were in 
fact, if not in name, mere slaves) were, on the whole, 
more than contented with their position. The work- 
man loved his gilde; he felt that he had not been 
forced by the despotism of a master to enter it, as the 
Roman workman went into the coUegimn, whether he 



FEUDAL AND FREE LABORERS. 407 

would or not. Besides, he felt that he liad reached the 
rank he held in the gilde by his own efforts, and he 
fancied that, the privileges Avhich he enjoyed by virtue 
of his membership had come down to him from the re- 
motest antiquity. He was proud of his rights, Avith that 
sort of intense pride which poor human nature always 
feels when it is conscious that it has the exclusive 
possession of a privilege. That privilege which he 
guarded with such jealous care was as his life-blood, 
for by it he and his family were protected not merely 
Ji'om the rivalry of strangers in their trade, but also 
from the arbitrary caprice of the lord. Besides this, he 
generally helped to choose his own magistrates, aided 
to enforce the laws he had had a part in making, was 
judged by his own peers, and generally took a consider- 
able part in the government of the town in which he 
lived, the gilde to which he belonged being both a 
subdivision of the municipality and a school of political 
education. 

The movement which resulted in rendering both in 
the towns and in the rural districts the feudal dues a 
fixed and not an arbitrary sum was not freedom in our 
sense, but no doubt it was the first step made by the 
working class in both towards political liberty and social 
equality ; but the goal was far distant, and the path by 
which they reached it a most difficult one. Sucli Avas 
tlie oppression of labor by arbitrary exactions in France 
that an agreement on tlie part of the lords to be con- 
tent with any portion of it, no matter how large, pro- 



408 MEDLEVAL HISTORY. 

vided that portion was a fixed amount and sum settled 
beforehand, was regarded as an immense boon. But 
neither in the towns nor in the country was the work- 
man long permitted to be under the delusion that he had 
been an immediate gainer by freedom from feudal ser- 
vices. For the arbitrary feudal dues were substituted 
fixed taxes to the towns and the king, the only change 
being that they were regularly levied and constantly in- 
creased in number and in amount. It would be impos- 
sible here to enumerate all the burdens which the fiscal 
ingenuity of the ministers of the King of France and 
of his great vassals, who were all petty sovereigns, im- 
posed upon the products of labor for many generations. 
A glance at some of them is instructive, especially if the 
history of England at contemporaneous periods, so far 
as it aifects the labor question, be kept in view. There 
was the iaille, a general tax levied upon the presumed 
value of each person's estate, the haubaUy on its product, 
the transportation-tax, road-tax, ferry-tax, river-tolls, 
tax on all sales either of produce or merchandise. These 
are only specimens of the many vexatious claims which 
the king or the lord who was the sovereign made upon 
the inhabitants of town or country. Then in addition 
there were the corvees, the pressure of which was most 
felt by the rural population, such as the obligation of 
each peasant to have his grain ground at the lord's mill, 
his grapes turned into wine at the lord's press, and his 
flour made into bread at the lord's bakery, and all this, 
of course, at the lord's prices. 



DISCONTENT IN FRANCE. 409 



IJDder such a system, as the misery of the people in- 
creased the productiveness of labor diminished, and the 
wonder is that the French workmen were not wholly 
crushed; but patience was for a long time the badge of 
all their tribe, and the spirit of resistance seemed driven 
out of them by the habit of slavery. It was not until 
seven-eighths of the population of France found that 
four-fifths of the product of their industry were taken 
from them to support the other eighth of the popula- 
tion, composed of the nobles and the clergy (who paid 
no taxes and were subject to no corvees), in idleness and 
luxury, that their large stock of that virtue became 
at last exhausted. Then wide-spread revolt, under the 
name of La Jacquerie, among the peasants and the un- 
enfranchised workmen of the towns, added during the 
fourteenth century the misery of civil war to the horrors 
of the English invasion, and to the wretched condition 
of those who depended upon the reward of their labor 
to keep them from starvation. These revolts only weak- 
ened the people, and were powerless to effect a change. 
The increasing expenses of the kings of the Valois race, 
owing to their wars and the extravagant habits of the 
court, made necessary new expedients still more oppres- 
sive than the old of raising money from the exhausted 
population. The unwillingness or inability of the States- 
General, which was supposed to rej^resent all classes in 
the kingdom, to afford any relief, and the harsh exercise 
of the royal authority in enforcing its demands upon 
those towns which had once been its allies in subvertino- 



35 



410 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

the overgrown pretensions of the feudal nobility, drove 
the people to despair. All this, persisted in for centuries, 
with an utter disregard of the welfare or happiness of 
the people, could have but one ending; and that was 
reached in the terrible vengeance of the French Revo- 
lution. Even those who at that time looked back most 
calmly on the history of their country felt that that 
history taught them that there could be but one remedy 
against a continuance of the horrors from which they 
had suffered for more than five hundred years, and that 
was to be found in the utter destruction of the privileged 
classes, the clergy and the nobility of France. That 
revolution w^as simply an explosion of the dangerous 
elements which had been gradually gathering in the 
heart of the country since it had become apparent that 
the promise of freedom to the working classes and of 
representative institutions was never to be fulfilled. 
They never forgot^ that this promise had been constantly 
broken by tlie rulers of France ever since the days of 
Philippe le Bel. The French Revolution, then, first gave 
to traders and mechanics on the Continent of Europe 
})olitical and social equality, and hence placed upon a 
j)ermanent basis the influence and control of the class 
who are such conspicuous actors in the social life of our 
time. 

The contrast between the history of France and that 
of England, so far as the labor question is concerned, is 
very striking and instructive. The English were called 
by Napoleon I. ^^a nation of shopkeepers;'^ and it is 



CONTRAST IN ENGLAND. \\\ 

certain that the legislation of the country, from the time 
of the early ITorman kings to the present, has been dic- 
tated by an unceasing eifort to extend the influence in the 
government of the country of the trading classes. The 
feudal system, and afterwards the autocratic monarchical 
system, were thoroughly organized and established in 
England, but neither of them was strong enough to 
resist the force of enfranchised workmen contending for 
the rights of labor. By the charter of Henry I. (1071- 
1127) the king promised that the barons should be 
forced to do justice to their serfs, and to renounce the 
practice of tyrannical exactions from them. His grand- 
son, Henry II. (1178), among other reforms, divided the 
kingdom into six judicial circuits, the courts in which 
were presided over by judges of his own appointment, 
and whose functions were extended to the abolition of 
all feudal exemptions from the royal jurisdiction. The 
Magna Charta of King John (1215), besides establish- 
ing that fundamental principle of English freedom, "that 
no man in the realm should be deprived of his life, lib- 
erty, or property, except by the judgment of his peers 
and by the law of the land,'^ provided that the serfs on 
the estates of the barons should be protected from their 
lawless exactions, in precisely the same terms as these 
barons themselves were guaranteed protection against the 
oppression of the crown. The towns, too, were secured 
in the enjoyment of their municipal privileges, in their 
freedom from arbitrary taxation, in their rights of jus- 
tice and of common deliberation, and in their power to 



412 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

regulate trade within their limits. But the great and 
fatal blow against the supremacy of the feudal system in 
England was struck when, in the reign of Henry III., 
Simon de Montfort, as has been explained in a previous 
chapter, summoned each town in the kingdom to elect 
two burgesses who should represent it in Parliament. 
Out of this revolutionary movement (1264) grew the 
House of Commons. This body, and especially the bur- 
gesses who represented the trading class in it, in the end 
directed the policy of the government. To the influence 
of this class we owe that policy in regard to trade and 
labor which, truly representing the English instincts in 
such matters, always makes itself heard with paramount 
authority in the House of Commons. Its history pre- 
sents to us the most striking picture of the virtues and 
defects of a people whos.e civilization is the outgrowth of 
many and of diverse influences, but of none more potent 
than the desire to preserve the supremacy of British 
trade, which by many is regarded as the necessary result 
of a devotion to British interests. 



CHAPTER XV. 



MEDIAEVAL COMMERCE. 



With our conceptions of a true civilization is insepa- 
rably associated the idea of movement. In our estimate 
of the influences which control the destiny of a people, 
movement almost always signifies progress and improve- 
ment, and immobility, stagnation and sometimes decay. 
We think, for instance, of the history of a vast empire 
like that of China, and we see the same general ideas — 
religious, political, and educational — prevailing there 
now which have controlled the country for thousands of 
years, and that tliis condition is the result of a fixed 
policy of immobility in accordance with the views of all 
its great sages, philosophers, and statesmen. Although 
we cannot deny that in one sense the Chinese are a highly 
civilized people, yet we feel that from our point of 
view their system is wholly out of harmony with our 
ideal of civilization, simply because it is stationary and 
non-receptive, and therefore we regard their condition 
as non-progressive, if not actually retrograde. We do 
this, not merely because it is unlike our own, but because 
it is based upon the theory that it was completed for its 
own purposes ages ago, and because it carefully ex- 
cludes what we have been taught from history to think 

is the most valuable peculiarity of any civilization, iti^ 

35* 413 



414 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

capacity for improvement. We believe that movement 
or change the result of a certain receptivity is essential 
to true progress, and hence we have come to consider 
these two things as bearing to each other the relation of 
cause and effect. 

We have, however, also learned that it is not every 
cause which breaks up the monotony of a nation^s life 
and disturbs its old relations, not every movement, in 
other words, which necessarily promotes civilization and 
])rogress. Take India for instance, a country which, 
from the time of the first Aryan invaders to the present, 
has been overrun by foreign arms and ruled by foreign 
dynasties, which has been the spoil of such scourges of 
God as Genghis-Khan, Tamerlane, and the long line of 
despots called the Great Moguls, to say nothing of the 
rule of the East India Company, and of its successor, the 
English government. This country has been subdued 
over and over again, and dynasties established by men 
differing in religion, race, and political ideas, having 
nothing in common but the lust of conquest; indeed, in 
its history there seems to have been always movement 
of a certain kind ; yet, so far as Indian life and Indian 
habits, Indian civilization, in short, are concerned, the 
movement has been hardly more than a ripple on the 
surface ; the result of it all has been conquest, and not 
assimilation and therefore gradual growth and change. 
Indian life in its essential features does not differ from 
what it was when Alexander the Great declared its 
great river the boundary of his Empire. 



MOVEMENT AND ASSIMILATION. 415 

Hence movement in order to produce a fruitful civil- 
ization must be sometliing more than mere conquest, or 
even the permanent occupation of one country by the 
people of another. I have endeavored to exhibit the 
great historical examples of the principle of progress 
resulting from true assimilation following the conquest 
of one country by another in the case of the barbarian 
invasions of the Roman Empire. Under the circum- 
stances which I have detailed, by means of tlie assimila- 
tion of the Teutonic principle of personal independence 
vv'ith the Roman organization of law and its supremacjy, 
powerfully aided by the influence of a common Chris- 
tianity, the civilization of our modern times grew out 
of these heterogeneous, if not opposite, elements. The 
glory of European civilization is that it is formed in no 
cast-iron mould, but is always more or less in a condition 
to be shaped by the ideas, discoveries, inventions, or new 
relations — the envlroyiment, as it has been called — which 
may grow up around it at any jmrticular epoch. 

During the darkest period of tlie Middle Age, after 
the fusion of the barbarian, the Roman, and the Church 
was completed, it seemed that the greatest danger to its 
life was from that immobility which is characteristic of 
Oriental civilizations settling upon it. I conceive that 
Europe was saved from the dangers of this immobility, 
that the life of her people was made not only more com- 
fortable, refined, and cultivated, but also more liberal, 
comprehensive, and receptive, by the peaceable means 
of the more frequent intercourse of her people, not only 



416 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

with their own countrymen, but also and especially with 
the Mohammedans of the East, through the instrumen- 
tality of commerce. 

To nations at a certain stage of their life, which may 
be called the formative or receptive stage, commerce has 
always proved the great civilizer ; and indeed I might 
go further, and say that just in proportion to a nation's 
foreign intercourse, not confining such intercourse to an 
exchange of commodities merely, has its civilization been 
promoted. The greatest States of antiquity gained their 
real and permanent influence from the political education 
and habits of mind which this intercourse fostered, a 
condition which became a more important element in 
shaping their life than even the changes which were the 
result of the wealth which commerce brought to them. 
Commerce followed in the wake of empire then, as it 
does now. What would have been the outcome of 
Greek civilization had it not been for the influence and 
power of the Greek commercial colonies in the Mediter- 
ranean and the Black Sea ? and in what would the con- 
quests of the Komans have differed from those of Attila 
and Tamerlane had not their intercourse with the Greeks 
added to their power of subduing and plundering na- 
tions the knowledge of the Greek art of civilizing tliem ? 
Foreign conquests have a permanent influence only as 
they engraft the ideas of the conquerors upon the nations 
they subdue. 

The principle of the necessity of intercourse with 
foreign peoples in order to better our own is a cardinal 



ISOLATION OF MEDIEVAL TIMES. 417 

principle with all students of the history of civilization. 
The human animal, like all other animals, is improved 
after a time by the infusion of new blood, which is only 
another name for new ideas. " If I were asked," says 
Sismondi, a writer not at all in sympathy with the prac- 
tices of Catholicism, " what was the knowledge acquired 
during the Middle Age which did most to quicken and 
develop the intelligence of the people of that time, I 
should say, without the slightest hesitation, the knowl- 
edge of geography acquired by the pilgrims to the Holy 
Land." 

Let us consider, then, the obstacles which for a long 
time during the Middle Age restricted that commercial 
intercourse which we deem so essential to progress, and 
then we may better understand the changes which took 
place in the whole aspect of society when commerce was 
revived and extended. That which strikes us most for- 
cibly when we think of the condition of the people of 
Western Europe in the Middle Age is their isolation 
from the rest of the world, an isolation caused by the 
absence not only of commercial intercourse, but of in- 
tercourse of any kind, wdth the nations by which they 
were surrounded. There was, it is true, one common 
bond which united them, — that of the Christian faith,, 
as organized on the fundamental principle of submission 
to a common spiritual father called the Pope; but the 
more closely they were tied together by such a chain 
as this the more repellent and unsympathizing they 
became to those outside of them. To maintain any 



418 medijEVAl history. 

relations with the infidel Mussulmans, who at that time 
had the monopoly of the productive resources of the 
world, was a crime against the Church ; and intercourse 
with other Christian countries, then peopled by those 
called Greek schismatics, was an offence against the same 
authority scarcely less grave. Wars on a large scale, 
and between communities differing in religion, habits, 
and ideas, had ceased, so that the lessons which even that 
stern teacher had so often taught the world by educing 
a working system of an improved kind out of the con- 
flict of hostile races were no longer learned. The con- 
sequence was that Western Europe, from the period of 
the cessation of the invasions down to that of the Cru- 
sades, had a population more ignorant, brutalized, and, 
in our modern sense, more uncivilized, than during the 
worst period of the decaying Roman Empire. 

As if to make the contrast more striking, that portion 
of Europe then under the Pope's obedience was sur- 
rounded both on the east and west by communities dif- 
fering from it in the form of their religion, but vastly 
superior to it in all that makes a civilized people. It is 
a humiliating confession for the student of Christian 
civilization to make, but it must be made if the truth is 
to be spoken, that Spain under the Saracens, Western 
Asia under the Caliphs of Bagdad, and even the Byzan- 
tine Greeks, in all the useful arts, as well in those which 
adorn life as in those qualities of culture, refinement, 
and general intelligence which raise a people in the scale 
of national well-being, were immeasurably superior to 



ROMAN COMMERCE. 419 

the coarse knights, the coarser peasants, and the fanatical 
priests who at that time made up European Christian 
society. As I have often said, the seed was indeed 
there, but its growth was slow, covered up as it was by 
tlie protecting arm of the Church and choked by the 
dense ignorance of the people. It needed the warmth 
and light which came from other lands to quicken its 
life. In other words, there would probably have been 
no civilization, in our sense, in Europe, had there not 
been commerce with the East ; and the history of the 
development of that commerce in all its far-reaching 
effects is the history of one of the richest and most 
fruitful sources of our modern life. 

There is, therefore, a peculiar interest in the study of 
the history of mediaeval commerce. The age stands out 
in striking contrast in this respect both with that which 
preceded and that which followed it. The Roman Em- 
pire, great as it was by its arms, owed even more of its 
greatness, or at least its permanent influence in the world, 
to its commercial intercourse. As soon as the Roman 
power was definitively established in Italy by the result 
of the Punic Wars, the Mediterranean Sea, the great 
basin of the civilizations of antiquity, bathing three con- 
tinents with its waters, became the highway not merely 
to the farther conquests of its arms, but, what is more 
important, to its relations with peoples of a different 
type from its own. The Romans gained by these 
conquests and the intercourse resulting from them not 
merely power and wealth, but also a knowledge of that 



420 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

art- in which they have excelled any people in history, 
and which became the most characteristic and permanent 
feature of their policy, — the art of successfully govern- 
ing peoples of different races and religions. That art 
rests mainly, I conceive, upon a spirit of comprehensive- 
ness, the result of a large experience of different types, 
of which the wonderful organization of their law was 
the outgrowth. We may safely say that the Eomans 
would never have adopted such a system had they 
confined themselves to Italy. This, however, was the 
general result, reached very gradually, and dependent 
in a great measure on the changes produced by the 
intercourse of the Eomans with strange people, and the 
necessity of adapting their rule to foreign habits, and 
the introduction of a certain cosmopolitan spirit among 
themselves. We do not always get an adequate idea of 
the extent of ancient commerce, and especially of that 
of the Romans, so that we fail to estimate rightly the 
importance of its influence in history. 

We must remember that the Romans, by their con- 
quests and by their subsequent commercial intercourse, 
were brought into relations with the m st wealthy and 
flourishing communities of the world. From Greece 
and the Greek colonies in the Mediterranean and the 
Black Sea they brought not only their literature and 
their laws (so potent in shaping their destiny), but also 
those habits and tastes for refinement and luxury and 
the means of gratifying them which made the Roman 
character during the Empire so different from what it 



THE TRADE WITH THE EAST. 421 

had been under the republic. In those days riches and 
culture were far more inseparable in men's minds than 
they have ever been since. All the precious products of 
the Greek cities, in Greece proper and in Asia Minor, 
flowed in abundant streams into one reservoir, the city 
of Rome, which thus became not only the Imperial 
city, but the richest city in the world. The love of 
luxury and the means of paying for its enjoyment stim- 
ulated in a wonderful degree commercial enterprise. 
The Romans, not satisfied with all the appliances of a 
luxurious life furnished by the wealth and productive- 
ness of the cities on the Mediterranean, extended their 
covetous desires to farthest India. From the time of 
Solomon that vast country had been regarded as the 
source of fabulous riches of a kind produced only 
within its own borders. 

To reach this El Dorado the Romans of the Empire 
established no less than three routes. The first was by 
way of Alexandria and the Nile, thence across the Isth- 
mus to the Red Sea, and thence down the coast of Mal- 
abar ; the second, through Syria by way of the famous 
city of Palmyra to the Persian Gulf; and the third, by 
way of the Black and Caspian Seas and the river Oxus. 
By these three routes the Romans received from India 
pearls and other precious stones, spikenard, myrrh, frank- 
incense, silk, spices, precious marbles, slaves, women's 
dresses, girdles, etc. So immense was the demand, not 
of course in the city of Rome only, but among the 

wealthy, in the Roman provinces also, for these articles, 

36 



422 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

and so high was their cost, that although the wines of 
Italy and Asia Minor, metals, arms, cloths, and the like, 
were exchanged for them, yet it is estimated by no less 
an authority than Pliny the Younger that besides all 
tliese things the amount of money sent by Rome to India 
for their purchase amounted yearly to fifty millions of 
sestertia (about two millions of dollars). The Mediter- 
ranean Sea, from the Gates of Hercules to the Bosphorus, 
continued as long as the Roman rule lasted what it had 
been in the time of its predecessors, the Phoenicians, the 
Carthaginians, and the Greeks, the highway of com- 
merce and the true road to a more complete civilization. 
Roman merchants transported from Spain the metals 
with which that country abounded, and poured through 
Marseilles, an ancient Greek colony, that stream of 
trade which fertilized all the cities of Southern Gaul and 
gave them those monuments of civilization which even 
now in their ruin attest the Roman power. It is not 
usual to regard the Romans as a commercial people, and 
certainly, as I have said, the class engaged in trade was 
not held in honor in the Imperial city ; yet of the two 
master-passions of the human mind, the love of gain 
and the love of war, it is hard to say which had more 
to do with extending the permanent influence of Rome 
in the world. 

We come then to the Middle Age, the age of con- 
trasts, so utterly unlike that which had gone before and 
that which succeeded it ; when commerce, external and 
internal, had perished in the invasions; when the routes 



REVIVAL OF COMMERCE. 423 

by sea and land were forsaken and wellnigh forgotten ; 
when, in consequence of the theories of the Church, 
nothing was done to encourage peaceful intercourse with 
foreign countries ; when immobility, isolation, and, as a 
result, barbarism, took the place of enterprise, free com- 
mercial intercourse, and the civilization which had been 
attendant upon them. There can be no more striking 
j)icture of the darkness and terror of those days than 
this utter cessation of those relations of men with their 
neighbors which had been created and stimulated in the 
days of antiquity by the love of gain. Such a condi- 
tion could not be lasting, for, had it been, the life of 
Euro])ean society would have been degraded to that of 
savages ; but several centuries passed before there were 
signs of revival. 

The dawn at last appeared on the borders of that 
Mediterranean Sea which had witnessed the decline of 
that commerce of which it had been the principal means 
of communication in the days of its glory. The causes 
which led to the founding of Venice are well known. 
A few inhabitants of the towns on the mainland of 
Italy, in order to save their property and their lives 
from Attila and his Huns, took refuge in the marshy 
islands which are found at the mouths of the rivers 
Brenta and Adige. There the barbarians, having no 
vessels, could not molest them, and there, deprived of 
all other means of gaining a livelihood, they began in a 
feeble way a commerce which gradually extended from 
one end of the Mediterranean Sea to the other, and made 



424 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

Venice the richest and one of the most powerful States 
in Europe during the Middle Age, because she was the 
most commercial. At the other end of the Italian pen- 
insula, Naples and Amalfi, towns which seem to have 
been practically independent in their government of the 
Greek Empire, of which they were the last relics in 
Italy, still kept up by means of a large fleet, to their 
own great profit and advantage, their commercial rela- 
tions with the East. Pisa and Genoa emulated their 
example, and the commerce they carried on with Egypt, 
Syria, Constantinople, and the ports of the Black Sea 
not only enriched them, but filled the interior towns 
of Italy with Oriental products, stimulating the taste 
for that peculiar culture, refinement, and luxury which 
precious books, precious stones, and precious works of 
art never fail to foster. All this, of course, was the 
work of centuries ; but it went on unceasingly, gradu- 
ally melting the rugged natures of the conquerors of 
Europe wherever it -could reach them, as the warm 
winds of the South the snows of winter. 

Every movement of commerce in those days by the 
cities on the Mediterranean was a step forward in civili- 
zation. Nor must we suppose that this influence was 
confined to Italy. Three great transalpine routes were 
established, leading from the South to the North of 
Europe, which were made use of as soon as the mer- 
chant had reasonable security for the safe transportation 
over them of his merchandise which came from the East. 
These consisted chiefly of articles of luxury, and were 



TRAFFIC OF THE ITALIAN TOWNS. 425 



soon sought after with so much avidity by the rude pop- 
ulation of Germany that the trade became a lasting 
and most profitable one. Two of these routes followed 
the course of the rivers Ehine and Danube, the one 
reaching the extreme north and the other the centre of 
Germany, and the third passing through tlie country 
from the foot of the Alps to the Baltic northeasterly. 

On these three routes are to be found the most famous 
historical cities of Germany : they were the true, almost 
the only, centres of civilization in transalpine Europe 
in the Middle Age, and they were made so because they 
were the entrepots of commerce between the East and 
the West. All this was, directly or indirectly, the 
work of the traflSc on the Mediterranean kept up by 
the Italian cities I have named. 

While the rest of Europe was in a state of stagna- 
tion, we should not forget that a great deal of the 
prodigious activity of these towns was owing to their 
having been self-governing. They were, therefore, able 
to adopt and carry out a policy suited to their own 
peculiar needs and position, and that policy was neces- 
sarily, in the confusion of the times, exclusively a com- 
mercial one. From the tenth century their ambition 
was, in true commercial spirit, to monopolize the trade 
of the Mediterranean, carrying on the business not for 
their own account only, but also for that of all their 
neighbors. The Venetian policy was, while maintaining 
with the greatest care the independence of the republic, 
to keep on good terms with the two opposite powers, the 



36* 



426 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

Byzantine Emperors and the Emperors of the West, — a 
task in the fulfihnent of which even their extraordinary 
skill sometimes failed. They succeeded more frequently 
by adopting a policy the basis of which at all times 
was the protection of their commercial interests. Their 
system, which was regarded in the Middle Age as a 
model of practical wisdom, was imitated by the other 
Italian commercial cities, and the result was that they 
became not only the providers of the wants of the 
world, but also set the fashions in all matters of taste 
and luxury to the rest of Europe, little considering, 
doubtless, that, while their sole object was to make 
money for themselves, they were unconsciously giving 
a characteristic tone to the general life of the time. 

There are many aspects in which the influence of the 
Crusades may be viewed, some of which we have already 
considered; but the permanent result, about which there 
can be no dispute, was the change produced by them in 
the condition of the world by the increased intercourse 
between the East and the West to which they gave rise. 
WHien we remember that commerce, before the discovery 
of America, meant simply an exchange of commodities 
between the East and the West, — that is, between Asia 
and Europe, — and that intercourse, and especially com- 
mercial intercourse, between the people of these two 
different portions of the world was denounced by the 
Church as a crime because it regarded the Orientals as 
Infidels, it is not difficult to understand that wonderful 
changes must have been produced by any shock which 



^ COMMERCE AND THE CRUSADES. 427 

broke up this practice of exclusion. A curious and most 
unexpected result of tlie crusading expeditions should be 
noted. They were undertaken with the hope of making 
the line dividing the Christian and the Infidel broader 
and deeper; but the intercourse of those engaged on both 
skies, forced as it was, produced a directly opj)osite result, 
and made those widely-separated races respect each other 
jnore and more as they came to know each other better. 
It is amusing to read in contemporaneous accounts how 
each party regarded the other before they met as savages, 
or as worse, devils incarnate. It was long before the 
cultivated, polished, and luxurious Mussulmans could 
look upon the Crusaders in any other light than that 
in which the Romans had regarded the rude hordes of 
Attila, that is, as the mere offscouring of the earth ; 
and so it is wonderful to observe how slow the soldiers 
of the Cross, with their lofty conception of the charac- 
ter of the Christian knight, were to recognize in Saladin 
a far truer and nobler knight than their own leaders, 
Kichard Coeur de Lion and Philip Augustus. 

When the Crusades began, the cities of Asia Minor 
were still the seats of wealth and luxury, which, indeed, 
they had been from the earliest antiquity; and, whatever 
may have been the o])inion of the Crusaders concerning 
the religion of the Infidels whom they had come from 
the ends of the world to fight, it is very clear that they 
soon became alive to the new worldly pleasures with 
which these cities temp Led them. They not only eagerly 
shared in these pleasures, but their tastes became so 



428 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

formed by what they saw and enjoyed that they were 
not satisfied on their return to their homes to resume 
their former rude habits of life. All the appliances of 
luxurious living could at that time be found only in the 
East, and the desire to gratify the new taste stimulated 
to a remarkable degree the commercial intercourse be- 
tween the East and the West. Whatever other countries 
of Europe lost in population and resources by the Cru- 
sades, it is very clear that these expeditions enriched 
Italy, and especially made the fortunes of the republics 
of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa. These maritime cities, 
which already before the Crusades possessed an exten- 
sive traffic, gained immensely by these wars. Their 
fleets transported many to the Holy Land, and Venice 
at least, with characteristic commercial enterprise, forced 
those who desired to embark in her vessels to work their 
passage, so to speak, by insisting upon their capturing, 
for the benefit of Venetian commerce, Zara, on the Dal- 
matian coast, and Constantinople. These conquests gave 
Venice not only the trade of Syria, but extensive pos- 
sessions on the mainland of Greece and in the Archi- 
pelago. Thus, while religion was striving to sever the 
population of the East from the West, the Infidel from 
the Christian, commerce was binding them with bonds 
which were not loosened until the discovery of the 
Western world removed the seat of trade from the 
shores of the Mediterranean to those of the Atlantic. 

Thus much for the maritime commerce of the South 
of Europe. Nearly contemporaneous with it was a 



IHE HANS E A TIC LEA G UE. 429 



movement of the same sort, but better organized, in 
the North, under the direction of a system known in 
mediseval history as the Hanseatic League. The word 
Hanse, in Norman French, signifies an association, and 
this association was formed of cities and princes in 
Germany and tlie North of Europe, without regard to 
nationality, who desired to trade with each other, and 
whose commercial intercourse could not be carried on 
safely or profitably in those wild times without the pro- 
tection of a powerful confederacy such as this. The 
rulers of the petty princii3alities of Germany aud the 
North not only did nothing to encourage industry and 
protect commerce in their States, but often despoiled 
both merchants and artisans of their wares in the towns 
or robbed them while they were transporting them from 
one town to another. The towns became in this junc- 
ture, as so often, the true saviors of society, and their 
efforts to protect themselves and the fruits of their 
industry, no doubt, prevented the relapse of Germany 
to its original savage condition. These towns for our 
present purpose may be divided into two classes, the 
one the manufacturing, the other the commercial ; the 
first, of course, chiefly in the interior, and the latter on 
the coast, principally, in the beginning, on the shores 
of the Baltic. The object was, first, to secure the safety 
of the merchandise transported from one of these in- 
terior towns to another from the attacks of the robber- 
knights, who were accustomed to plunder the merchants 
travelling on the great routes of trade, and then, by 



430 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 



means of the ships belonging to the maritime cities, to 
transport the manufactures of these towns to places in 
the North where they might be exchanged for the raw 
materials and products so abundant in that portion of 
the world. It was necessary, such was the lawlessness 
of the times, that these ships should be protected from 
pirates, just as those who journeyed by land had to be 
guarded from the attacks of the robber-knights. 

The energy, \^itality, and enterprise which the pursuit 
of industry and trade gives suggested to those towns 
interested associations among themselves as the most 
efficient means of mutual protection. By the year 1350 
seventy of the principal cities of Germany and Holland 
formed a commercial confederacy with these objects 
chiefly in view. Nearly a hundred years before, the 
Hanseatic League, originally intended for the protection 
of trade both by land and by sea, and composed of cities 
on both shores of the Baltic and of the neighboring 
towns in Poland and West Russia, had been formed. All 
similar associations in Germany were soon merged in it. 
Of this league the famous city of Lubeck was chief and 
president. There were assembled within its walls at 
stated intervals Diets, composed of representatives of the 
towns belonging to the league, which enacted laws for its 
government and settled its general policy. This associa- 
tion, as time went on and its usefulness became apparent, 
grew most extended in its operations and formidable 
in its power, wielding an influence not inferior to that 
of any regular government in Europe, and yet outside 



POLICY OF THE LEAGUE. 431 



and independent of them all, — a curious and unique 
instance in mediaeval history, not only of a veritable 
imjjerium in imperio, but also of representative govern- 
ment long maintained and completely successful in the 
objects it had in view. 

The object of this association was, in one word, com- 
mercial monopoly, to be gained by acquiring the ex- 
clusive control of the carrying trade of the North of 
Europe. Its leaders wished to secure for it on a grand 
scale in the commercial aifairs of Europe the same exclu- 
sive privileges which the members of the gildes or trade 
corporations possessed in the towns. We may form some 
idea of its power when we consider what it proposed to do, 
and what in the course of time it actually accomplished. 
It undertook to protect its members from oppression 
while engaged in carrying on their trade, to guarantee, 
by armed force if necessary, the security of all the com- 
mercial routes which the members might pass over, to 
enforce the observance, both by its own meuibers and 
by the strangers with whom they traded, of wise com- 
mercial regulations, and to extend the commerce of the 
association as widely as possible, both by sea and by 
land. For these purposes the Hanseatic League raised 
armies, equipped vessels of war, made treaties and alli- 
ances with foreign powers, and, in short, for nearly five 
centuries exercised all the functions of a regular govern- 
ment in carrying out its plans. All this time, be it 
remembered, it was entirely independent of any govern- 
ment or country in Europe, and held them all in such 



432 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

subjection by virtue of its monopoly of the trade of 
their subjects that it became a power of the first magni- 
tude in the settlement of the general European policy. 

The reason at the bottom of all this was a very simple, 
but it seems to us now a very singular one. It was this. 
In those days no country in the North of Europe had a 
national marine, such as those of the republics on the 
Mediterranean. There were then no national commercial 
interests, such as now form the basis of the national 
policy of at least all maritime nations, and commerce 
seems to have been regarded for a long time in that part 
of the world as affecting the important interests of the 
population hardly more than we should be by a change, 
for instance, in the methods adopted for the transporta- 
tion of the mails. The feudal mind was never able to 
comprehend the far-reaching effects of a commercial 
policy, and of course never dreamed of its destiny when 
commerce should become king. It was not, in short, 
regarded as a national concern at all. It existed only, 
as was thought, for the supply of w^ants which were 
looked upon as mainly artificial, and therefore any 
agency which did this limited work well was considered 
all-sufficient. 

A striking illustration of the indifference during the 
Middle Age to commerce as an affair of national impor- 
tance and as a source of national wealth, and of the sud- 
den change of opinion on this subject, at least in Eng- 
land, is found in the history of that country during the 
reif^n of Edward III. As is well known, the princij^al 



EDWARD III. AND THE LEAGUE. 433 

agricultural product of England down to the middle of 
the fourteenth century was sheep's wool. This wool had 
long been shipped to the manufacturing towns in Flan- 
ders, where it was woven into cloth and sent back to 
England, together Avith whatever else of Flemish pro- 
duction its value would buy. This sort of trade had 
long continued in England, and was entirely in the 
hands of the agents of the Hanse, who had their gilde- 
hall in London, and whose ships carried the outward 
cargo of wool and brought back the homeward cargo of 
manufactured articles. But it seems to have struck that 
most sagacious of English kings, Edward III., that this 
was a process, so far as his own country was concerned, 
which mii>;ht be called " burnino; the candle at both 
ends." He determined to stop it. He was without ships 
suitable for such a trade, and, like the other rulers in the 
North of Europe, he was w^iolly dependent upon the 
Hanse for the conveyance of foreign merchandise. But 
this did not deter him, and he issued an order that here- 
after no wool should be exported from the kingdom, and 
no woollen cloths should be imported. By so doing he 
accomplished three things, none of which he had prob- 
ably anticipated. 1, He laid the foundation of manu- 
facturing industry in England ; 2, he destroyed utterly 
the monopoly of English commerce by the Hanse; and, 
3, he substituted for it the English mercantile marine, 
thereby creating two at least of the most important ele- 
ments in the greatness and wealth of modern England. 

But other countries in the North of Europe were not 

37 



434 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

strong enough to secure for their own vessels their own 
carrying trade and thus make themselves independent 
of the Hanseatic Leaa^ue. For more than two centuries 
the Hanse maintained its supremacy in the Northern 
seas, and kept up especially an active trade between the 
manufacturing towns of Flanders and those in Northern 
Germany and on the Baltic, in each of which it estab- 
lished a comptoir, or factory, managed by officers of the 
League, and from which, as entrepots, the goods were 
distributed to places in the most remote ])arts of Russia, 
Poland, and Sweden. Notwithstanding the discomfiture 
of the League in England, commerce in the North re- 
mained under its control, for without its aid, in the 
existing condition of the world, its pursuit would have 
been wellnigh impossible. The Hanse took advantage 
of its position by forcing the States within whose ter- 
ritory were situated the towns with which it traded to 
make treaties with it, and to levy upon the cargoes trans- 
ported by its vessels duties so much lower than those 
exacted from others that it soon crushed out all attempts 
at rivalry. This system of commerce prevailed until 
the discovery of America, and the consequent diversion 
of trade into new channels, and the establishment by 
the Northern powers of a national mercantile marine 
with special privileges and exemptions. The Hanseatic 
League had outlived its usefulness; but it was not for- 
mally abolished by the public law of Europe until the 
peace of Westphalia, in 1648, when, as we have said, the 
occasion for its peculiar service had long passed away. 



HUMANIZING INFLUENCES. 435 

Of course the commerce of the North {3r()cluced 110 
such sudden and extraordinary effect on the civilization 
of Europe as that of the Mediterranean ; yet in bnikling 
np towns and in the exchange of commodities between 
them, a trade stimulated by the desires of peoi>le of 
widely diversified wants, it not only settled permanently 
the industrial status of Europe, but by so doing laid the 
foundation of a general policy, since adopted by all her 
statesmen, of protecting by treaty and legislation the in- 
terests of the trading and laboring classes of the nation. 

There were various humanizing influences incidental 
to the prosecution of mediaeval commerce which are suf- 
ficiently fiimiliar, but which perhaps it may be well to 
recall here, because their influence reached into far later 
times. There was, for instance, the whole system of 
credit and banking in commercial transactions, which, it 
is true, grew out of the necessities of the case, but which 
was not only wholly out of harmony with the general 
tendencies of the Middle Age as I have had occasion to 
describe them, but in direct opposition to the authority 
of the Church, whose uniform testimony was that the 
taking of interest for the loan of money was a high crime. 
We have been taught to believe that the mediaeval age 
was pre-eminently a religious age, in which Church au- 
thority was supreme. And yet, in striking o])position 
to this view^, we find that when two motives of action, 
that of religion and that of gain, were set before large 
classes of men in those days, they never seem to have 
hesitated, any more than men now do, to risk their souls 



436 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

if they could make money. They did this whether 
they were driving hard bargains with the Crusaders 
who desired to be helped on their way to the rescue of 
the Holy Sepulchre, or wdiether they were making their 
fellow-Christians pay, in defiance of the authority of the 
Church, high rates of usury. 

Another great modern humanizing principle — "the 
noblest innovation," as it has been called, "of modern 
times" — is the practice, if not the principle, of religious 
toleration; and it had its origin in the intercourse of 
the mediaeval traders. There is a universal religion, the 
obligations of which are recognized alike by Jews, Turks, 
Heretics, and Infidels, and that is one based upon the 
principle of fair and honest dealing between man and 
man. When the Christian merchants found that the 
followers of tlie False Prophet paid their debts punc- 
tually and fulfilled their contracts with the strictest 
honesty; when they found the outcast Jew always ready, 
as a capitalist, to assist them in any enterprise which 
promised gain in return for the money advanced ; when 
traders were brought into daily intercourse with those 
whose religion difiered from their own, and found how 
many ideas they had in common, — it was simply impos- 
sible that they should look upon and treat those not of 
their religion as children of Satan, such as the Church 
represented them. Thus, strange to say, the practice of 
toleration was largely due to the most selfish of human 
instincts, — the love of gain. 

There was another change in the mediaeval conception 



COMMERCE AND MODERN HABITS. 437 



of life produced by commercial intercourse which it is 
important to notice. The ideal of a perfect life in those 
days according to the Ciiristian standard waspot-erfy, the 
monastic life being regarded as the highest type because 
it was ascetic. Commerce and wealth stimulated the 
introduction of luxury, and habits of luxurious living 
became so general that neither the denunciations of the 
Church nor the sumptuary laws nor the statutes of Ap- 
parel enacted by the State could do anything, for a time 
at least, to check the wild extravagance of flishion. This 
was, no doubt, an evil while it lasted ; but out of it came 
in the end great good. If the people in modern times 
lead more cleanly, decent lives, in more convenient and 
comfortable houses, than they did in the Middle Age, it 
is due in a great measure not merely to the increase of 
wealth in itself, but to the higher standard of living 
which was made possible by the introduction into Euro^ 
pean life of many things which are now objects of the 
first necessity, but which in the rude life of the past 
were thought by the sober-minded to be sinful luxuries. 
So we owe to mediaeval commerce the birth of that 
benign system of international law which to-day is 
the only force that keeps each nation in its appointed 
sphere and enables it to do its appointed work without 
clashing with its neighbors. As there were no inter- 
national relations in the medieval era, the stranger, out 
of the jurisdiction of his immediate petty sovereign, was 
in the fullest sense an enemy and treated as such. There 
was one exception to this rule which painfully marks 



438 medIjEVal history. 

the prevalence of class distinctions at tliat time. The 
noble, by virtue of his nobility, was tlie^ citizen of the 
Christian world. He claimed in all countries equal 
privileges, and they were accorded to him without hesi- 
tation. But the trader or the merchant, whose calling 
took him sometimes through a half-dozen miserable little 
principalities in as many days, had no such rights. If 
he were shipwrecked, his merchandise, if it were driven 
ashore by the waves, as well as the lives of those of the 
crew wdio might be saved, were by law at the mercy of 
the lord who owned the land upon which they were 
washed up. This was his feudal right; and in accord- 
ance with it the property was confiscated to his use and 
the crew became his slaves. 

There was another practice in the mediaeval era which 
may be mentioned to show not merely how foreign the 
spirit of the time was to the encouragement of commerce, 
but also to show what we have escaped from by the 
gradual growth of commercial ideas. TJiis practice was 
founded upon what w^as called le droit cVauhalne, by 
which any stranger dying out of his own country was 
prohibited from making a will, and by which no stranger 
was permitted to receive a legacy from a subject of an- 
other jurisdiction. In either case an attempt to transfer 
the property worked its forfeiture, and it was confiscated 
to the lord of the fee. This was an extreme application of 
the principle of antiquity that no one who had not civil 
rights, that is, who was not a member of the particular 
city or people among whom he lived, could lawfully 



INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS. 439 

transmit property in any way. When we remember 
that there were no nations in the mediaeval era in our 
sense, and that Europe was divided into a multitude of 
})etty feudal sovereignties, each of which enforced this 
rule as against the other, we may form some idea of 
its destructiveness to that commerce whose existence is 
dependent upon the trust that contracts made in good 
faith shall never depend for their fulfilment on the 
contingencies of liuman life. This was one of the first 
subjects which occupied the attention of that diplomacy 
which grew out of the intercourse created by commerce. 
Shortly after the Crusades, Consuls were ai)poiiited by 
those republics trading in the cities of the East, to reside 
there and watcli over the interests of their countrymen 
who might be engaged in trade, and shortly after, or 
rather more tlian a century later. Ambassadors, one of 
whose functions, at least, was to look after similar in- 
terests, were accredited by the sovereigns of Europe to 
those countries with which their intercourse was most 
frequent. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE ERA OF SECULARIZATION. 

I HAVE endeavored by the illustratioDS which I have 
given of the life and history of the Middle Age to make 
it clear that the most characteristic and prominent feature 
of that life was that which made it the era of authority, 
in special and striking contrast with the era of individ- 
ualism, or that social condition in which the exercise of 
private judgment is regarded as the true rule of human 
action. It is hard for us to conceive, at the present day, 
when this right of private judgment is universally recog- 
nized, how far the opposite principle of authority was 
carried in mediaeval times; yet we must try and gain 
some adequate conception of it, for thus only can we 
understand the basis not only of mediaeval life, but of 
our own, as well as the cause for the striking difference 
between them. It is hardly too much to say that the 
contrast between the two eras is due perhaps quite as 
much to the controlling influence of one or the other of 
these two opposite principles as to any other cause. 

In discussing the historical life of Middle Age insti- 
tutions I have given examples of the universal and 
unchecked force of this principle of authority, — how 
it extended not merely to the control of the actions of 

men, but moulded the expression of all their thoughts 
440 



AUTHORITY AND INDIVIDUALISM. 441 



and opinions ; how it formed the standard of the conduct 
of tlieir lives ; how for such purposes its recognition was 
not a matter of choice, like that of respect for public 
opinion in this day, for instance, against which men, 
if they be brave and honest enough, may sometimes 
fight, but a firm belief in a visible and omnipresent 
])ower possessing all the machinery and appliances of a 
thoroughly organized government for the purpose of 
enforcing its authority. We come now to consider how 
this era of authority thus apparently resting perma- 
nently upon a universally recognized basis was gradu- 
ally supplanted by the great force of modern times, — 
individualism. 

The power which shaped men's thoughts and lives 
in the Middle Age was, as I have explained, vested in 
the Church, and its ideal conception of human life was 
to make this world the city of God, built up under its 
authority and guidance. Above all things in the Middle 
Age men sought to be good Christians. The claim of the 
Church's jurisdiction extended to the whole of human life, 
— not merely to a man's acts, but to his opinions, and not 
merely to his religious opinions, but to his opinions on 
every subject of human inquiry and interest, however 
remote some of these subjects may appear to us to have 
been from the sphere of theology. For more than six 
centuries, as I have explained, the Church was the only 
tribunal of opinion recognized in \yestern Europe on all 
subjects. Divine and human. Its decrees were not always 
obeyed, but its jurisdiction was never questioned. Let 



442 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

us consider for a moment the extent of its power outside 
of the theological domain proper. A life of poverty, 
for instance, was the highest form of life known to the 
Church, and was therefore so recognized by the people 
in the Middle Age. But what did this conception of 
life involve? Industry and commerce, the most fruitful 
of all the sources of civilization in modern times, had but 
a stunted growth, as has been seen, during the larger por- 
tion of the mediaeval era. Not only were the rewards of 
industry, which now stimulate human activity so strongly, 
then regarded as objects wholly undeserving of the zeal 
and energy of the true Christian, but the means also by 
which such results are reached in modern times, such as 
the borrowing of money on interest, and commercial in- 
tercourse with those who were not Christians, were posi- 
tively forbidden by the Church as highly sinful acts. 

So, in regard to the sciences, all original investigation 
was prohibited by the Church, not because the Church 
was opposed to investigation of anything which in itself 
might be considered doubtful, but because all questions 
of science, as well as those of morals and divinity, were 
supposed to have been settled by the authoritative in- 
terpretation by the Church of statements found in the 
Bible. The earth's cosmogony was thought to be ex- 
plained in that book as fully as the plan of redemp- 
tion. Thus, the world could not move, because Joshua 
had commanded the sun to stand still ; it could not be 
round, because the Bible was supposed to declare that it 
was flat ; and the true object of maritime expeditions, if 



CHANGE IN MEDIEVAL IDEAS, 443 

they were made at all, should be not to enlarge the do- 
minions of existing kings, or to increase the means of 
sn])plying the wants of their subjects, but to convert the 
savages that might be found in the new countries, and 
make them good Christians. And so with everything 
which is called in modern times science. It was not 
the Church's external force or pressure, at least in the 
earlier times, which indisposed men to investigate the 
forces of nature, but the mental atmosphere in which 
they lived, — the profound conviction which had grown 
with all their experience of life that the discussion of 
such problems was needless, because the Church, whose 
authority all recognized, had settled and decided them. 

All this was destined to pass away; and I propose 
to consider some of the earlier steps in this process of 
change. It is usual to ascribe that great change wliich 
took place in Europe by which the mediaeval era was 
brought to a close, to a general revolt of reason against 
authority, to a universal protest of the human conscience 
in favor of the right of private judgment against what 
are called the tyrannical usurpations of the Church. 
But this seems to me an inversion of the historical order. 
Men do not revolt against any system which has gov- 
erned them for ages simply because of philosophical objec- 
tions to that system. The first step is the one which they 
take when they feel keenly its practical inconveniences 
or grievances ; this breeds discontent and opposition ; 
and then it is time enough to seek for reasons to justify 
their desire for change, and to adopt measures to bring 



444 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

it about. This is the course of all revolntious; and it was 
the course of that in which the revival of learning and 
the Reformation were the last and not the first steps. 

The first symptom of the discontent which Avas fast 
growing in Europe in the fifteenth century with the all- 
pervading authority of the Church was, in general terms, 
restlessness. People were growing tired of the restraints 
which were imposed not so much on their opinions as 
upon their ordinary course of life. Men became more 
worldly because, as time went on, the world spread out 
before them irresistible temptations which had never 
been presented to their fathers. They grew less Chris- 
tian in the Church's sense; that is, they gradually ceased 
to ascribe to the Church's typical virtues of poverty, 
chastity, and obedience that paramount importance which 
they had held in the control of human life in earlier 
days. They were none the less devoted sons of the 
Church and stanch advocates of its authority. Ortho- 
doxy of belief and outward conformity have often co- 
existed with neglect of tlie practical duties of religion. 
They felt the restraint her laws imposed upon their 
desire'^ none the less, however, and the result was that 
when they attempted to escape from these restraints a 
strange spectacle was presented of an endeavor to har- 
monize their own self-indulgence in those new w^ays of 
life which seemed so tempting with professions of obe- 
dience to the authority of the Church. The truth is, 
the world was tired of the restraints which the Church 
had imposed upon it, just as it had become tired of the 



THE NATION AND THE CHURCH. 445 

Crusades. People were weary with the practice of self- 
denial, not because they doubted the Church's authority 
and duty to enforce it, but because other objects, which 
were not consistent with a self-denying spirit, became 
more attractive to their minds and claimed their atten- 
tion, such as love of adventure, the pursuit of riches, and 
fondness for luxurious living. In short, from a variety 
of causes, the era of secularization, in Avhich the human 
side of man's life was chiefly regarded, was supplanting 
tlie era of authority, in which man's destiny in his future 
life had been the exclusive preoccupation of all. 

Let us take some illustrations from instances of this 
change of mind or of public attention in Europe towards 
the close of the mediaeval era proper, and we can then 
best see what objects were substituted for the previous 
exclusive devotion to the interests of the Church, and 
why their pursuit at last completely overshadowed the 
position which the Church had formerly occupied. 

Perhaj^s the first great subject which interested in 
common the rulers of Europe, who may be considered 
the representatives of the public opinion of the time, when 
the bonds of the Church's discipline were felt less heavily 
by them, was a desire to build up in their respective 
countries nations in our modern sense, — that is, to estab- 
lish a central monarchical authority with a uniform rule 
over a large district peopled by the same race. To do 
this it was necessary not only to suppress the local feudal 
sovereignties among whom the rule of the land and its 

inhabitants had been divided, but to give practical shape 

38 



I 



446 MEDLEVAL HISTORY. 

also to a theory of exclusive nationality of which the 
Church had given no example and with which she could 
have no sympathy. The extreme outgrowth of this sen- 
timent, it may be said, was the substitution of patriotism 
for religion, loyalty to the State for faith in the Church. 
The Cluirch had always claimed universal sway, not 
merely from the nature of its constitution, of which the 
very essence was a common recognition of the equality of 
all mankind in its eyes and their obligation of obedience 
to a common rule, but also because, with its usual pre- 
science, it foresaw that separate national kingdoms might 
mean in the end, as turned out to be the case, separate 
national Churches, — a condition of things in which the 
unity of the Church, and especially the claim of com- 
mon obedience to the See of Rome, might be seriously 
endangered. The Holy Roman Empire was founded on 
this essentially anti-national theory. 

But the Church was powerless to check the new-born 
ambition of the kings of Europe to found powerful 
nationalities and family dynasties. The movement was 
a general one, and its execution absorbed much of the 
attention heretofore given to Church questions, and 
directed the thoughts and actions of those who then 
ruled Europe into a different if not an opposite channel. 
There was as yet no open hostility to the Church ; but 
a national policy of governing meant one not controlled 
by Church influence or authority. It is not necessary to 
repeat here the story of the process by which the great 
fiefs in different countries in Europe were gradually 



NA TIONAL POLICY AND AMBITION. 447 

annexed to the crown. It has been seen how Louis XI., 
in France, in the fifteenth century, by various means 
established the royal authority firmly throughout the 
kingdom and became King of France in reality as well 
as in name; how the power of the English nobility was 
ruined by the Wars of the Roses, which resulted in 
making Henry VIII. a more powerful monarch than 
any of his predecessors; how, in Spain, the various 
kingdoms of that country had become united under the 
sway of Ferdinand and Isabella, and a centralized mon- 
archy had been founded by the suppression of all local 
jurisdictions, as well of the nobles as of the towns ; how 
even in Germany, where the feudal principle, as opposed 
to tiiat of centralization, finally prevailed, large states 
with distinct interests, such as Prussia and Austria, were 
created. Everywhere about the same time a common 
sentiment, the desire to establish distinct and powerful 
nationalities, prevailed. 

The nation, or the king as representing it, — national or 
dynastic interests, in short, — soon occupied that foremost 
place in men's minds which they have ever since held, to 
the exclusion of the policy which had previously pre- 
vailed, of maintaining by secular means the authority of 
the Church. The creation of nationalities in the modern 
sense gave rise to a multitude of new and conflicting 
interests, and to policies for promoting them essentially 
worldly in the Church's sense. Their harmonious or- 
ganization was a task of the most difficult and delicate 
kind, and engrossed the exclusive attention of the best 



448 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

trained men ; and in the execution of such a work little 
or no aid could be expected from the theory or practice 
of the Church. Indeed, the advancement of many of 
those interests which had become essential to the nation's 
life, the chief object of which was the supply of needs 
mainly of a selfish and material kind, was inconsistent 
not only with the principle upon which the Church's 
authority was maintained, but also with that conception 
of the true ends of man's life which had been character- 
istic of the mediseval era. 

Men's tempers were not changed, at least consciously, 
but the aim of their lives was totally different from 
what it had been. The rulers of Europe were quite as 
warlike in the twelfth century as they were in the six- 
teenth, but how different were the motives which guided 
them ! There were no national wars of ambition during 
the mediaeval era : if an invasion took place such as that 
of France by England (during the Hundred Years' War), 
it was to support a claim, as in the case of Edward III., 
by inheritance, and not to extend dominion by robbery. 
The Church (sometimes, it is true, by making very fine 
and subtle distinctions) never recognized the lawfulness 
of war among Christian men, except as an appeal to God 
to decide the right. There was but one war, or one form 
of war, which the Church encouraged, and that was for 
the defence of the faith and the extirpation of the Infidel. 
But that reverence and obedience to the Church's au- 
thority which had moved all Europe, by the one common 
impulse which it felt during the mediseval era, to join at 



EFFECT OF NATIONAL WARS. 449 

the Chnrcli's command in an eifort to rescue the Holy 
Sepulchre from the Infidel, was out of date in the 
middle of the fifteenth century almost as much as it is 
now. It was not because men had ceased to love war ; 
but when nations became developed into nationalities, 
with a powerful national organization, they fought for 
different objects and were moved by different impulses. 

The Church always claimed that one of the most 
important objects of her mission on earth was to secure 
peace and order. The history of the Middle Age wofild 
hardly prove that she had been successful in this mis- 
sion ; yet it is a significant fact that no sooner had the 
principle of nationalities become the settled policy of 
Europe in place of that of Church authority, than, for a 
time at least, confusion and anarchy everywhere prevailed. 
National rivalries were excited, and national wars — wars 
of ambition only, of which the desire to gratify the pride, 
to advance the family, or to extend the dominions of 
the rulers of the principal kingdoms, was the moving 
impulse — became for centuries the normal condition of 
Europe. It is hard to find any other name or motive, 
for instance, for such wars as the expedition of Charles 
VIII. against Naples, or for the interminable conflict 
between Charles V. and Francis L, in which Henry 
VIII. became involved. Still, these wars were the off- 
spring of a national, or at least of a dynastic, impulse, and 
they not only directed men's attention to objects far other 
than those which the Church would have approved or 

encouraged in the day when it was the dominant power 

38* 



450 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

ill Europe, but they formed also a standard by which 
the decline of that power may be measured. 

The Church itself at that time, strange to say, or 
rather its visible head, the Pope, had become so oblivious 
of the traditions of his high office as to be engaged 
in wars with the same worldly and ambitious ends in 
view as his fellow-sovereigns in Europe. The Popes 
set a bad example in the fifteenth century to those kings 
who loved war and who were striving by it to extend 
th^r dominions in order to gratify their ambition or 
to ao^trrandize their families. Towards the close of the 
Middle Age, in the fifteenth century, the Popes had 
ceased to rule Europe by that moral power which had 
been enthroned in the persons of such men as Gregory 
the Great, Hildebrand, or ev^en Innocent III. Their 
authority as heads of the Church had not only sensibly 
declined, for reasons which I have fully discussed in 
previous chapters, but, strange to say, they themselves 
seem by their policy to have recognized the altered con- 
dition of the times. Hence they appear in the history 
of the fifteenth century as Italian princes, with the 
same anxious desire to provide for their families, to 
found dynasties, and to extend their territory, as moved 
in those days the other rulers of Europe in Italy and 
elsewhere, and no longer in the august and imposing 
form of God's vicegerents on earth. Sixtus IV., In- 
nocent VIII., Alexander VL, do not seem a whit less 
worldly, or less moved by worldly ambition and policy, 
than those kings of Europe who were then striving to 



POSITION OF THE POPES. 451 

consolidate a power founded on purely selfish and 
dynastic interests. 

The Popes in those days seem to have been regarded 
by their brother potentates as quite on a level with them, 
— that is, simply as rivals in pursuit of the same earthly 
objects. Hence one of the ^gns of the decadence of 
the papal authority was the readiness with which the 
Pope's territory was invaded by men calling themselves 
Catholics, whenever a policy of conquest adopted by any 
European power made it convenient to do so. In former 
ages and under the old Popes such an attempt would 
liave been regarded as sacrilegious, and excommunica- 
tion would have at once followed. Charles VIII. , how- 
ever, marched through the papal territory to his con- 
quest of Naples without any fear of the Pope's weapons, 
spiritual or carnal, and would have hesitated as little to 
fight against the troops of the Church as against those 
of any Italian prince who might oppose his advance. 
The Popes in the fifteenth century were mixed up with 
all the intrigues for the dismemberment of Italy and 
with the claims made by each robber for a share of the 
s[)oil ; and no wonder, when the august functions of 
the head of the Church were eclipsed by the pretensions 
of an Italian prince seeking only to extend his worldly 
power and to found a family, that the power which had 
so long ruled the destinies of Europe, which was, after 
all, a power on a moral basis, the public opinion of 
Europe, fast crumbled away. 

The tradition of the time when all Europe obeyed one 



452 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

spiritual head still survived, but, practically, long before 
the Reformation the bond of the old allegiance was 
broken. Men who cherished this tradition were struck 
with horror when they heard that Francis I., the eldest 
son of the Church, as he proudly called himself, had 
entered into an alliance Avith the Infidel Turk against 
Charles Y., the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, — 
that the lilies of France were mingled with the crescent 
of the Infidel in the assault upon the Christian Empe- 
ror's stronghold ; but what must have been their dismay 
when they heard that this very Emperor, who theoreti- 
cally held his office by the authority of the Pope, had 
not only besieged Rome with an army of German Prot- 
estant landsknechtSj but had made the Pope prisoner, and 
that he had at last been crowned Emperor by this very 
Pope on condition that he would restore his family, the 
Medici, to the sovereignty of Florence ! Thus, naturally 
and necessarily, the restraints of the era of authority 
became gradually loosened by the attitude which the 
Popes in the fifteenth century, who had been the heads of 
the system enforcing such authority, had assumed. It is 
impossible, it seems to me, to overestimate the encourage- 
ment given by these Popes to the substitution in Europe 
of the worldly and secular policy of the nation for the 
spiritual authority of the Church and exclusive devotion 
to its interests. 

But besides this new policy of nationalities, with its 
disintegrating eff'ect upon the Church's authority, various 
other tendencies, all leading to the same end, that of 



WORLDLINESS AND LUXURY. 453 

subverting the exclusive authority of the papal system, 
combined to bring the mediaeval era to a close and to 
awaken a permanent interest in a totally new class of 
subjects. 

Men became worldly as their control over the forces 
of nature increased, and asceticism formed no longer the 
ideal conception of life. Wherever there was commerce, 
in Italy, in Flanders, in the towns of Germany, the new 
life penetrated. The great objects of men, as they grew 
richer, were to increase steadily the share of comfort 
accessible to all, to stimulate man's intellectual forces so 
that the fruit of utility in its widest sense should be 
produced in the amelioration of his condition and in the 
increase of his knowledge. Thus they sought to secure 
industrial development, lasting tranquillity, and universal 
harmony, to provide for the most thorough investigation 
of all subjects, and to encourage the appreciation of all 
objects of human and natural interest. 

The luxury and magnificence of those who had become 
rich in commercial Europe in the fifteenth century were 
in as great contrast with that poverty of the preceding 
age, which the Church had exalted as the very crown of 
all virtues, as wnth the senseless vanity which is so char- 
acteristic of many rich people of our own day. Con- 
sider the manner in which the Medici employed their 
wealth (and they had hosts of imitators wherever the 
new tide of riches had reached in Europe), and mark 
the contrast between them and the mere rich man, 
both mediaeval and modern. We should not forget that 



454 MED LEVA L HISTORY. 

the era of the highest gloiy of scholars in Italy, when 
their title to consideration had almost snpplanted that of 
the anthority which had so long ruled the world, and 
when they were honored as they had never been before 
since the days of Pericles, was the era in which great 
fortunes were first made in that country by trade. The 
Medici's private fortune, as it has been well said, was 
a sort of public treasury freely opened to learned men. 
Scholars were in those days the companions, friends, and 
correspondents of true merchant princes like the Medici 
in every part of Europe. Costly manuscripts were pro- 
cured from the distant East for these scholars; their 
works of inestimable value were published at the expense 
of the merchants who had found out the noblest use of 
wealth. Statues and medals were sought for in the most 
distant regions that artists might study and imitate them ; 
the learned were honored guests at the tables of the 
wealthy ; and for the first time (alas ! perhaps also the 
last) the rich man and the scholar met on those terms 
of cordial familiarity and sincere friendship which re- 
moved any sense of obligation between them, standing 
as they did on a footing of equality as man to man, and 
without a thought of any degrading relation as of an in- 
ferior to a superior. Such was the representative typi- 
cal man in Italy on the eve of the Renaissance, or the 
age of transition from the mediaeval to the modern era. 
I have dwelt upon his position and influence, not merely 
because the increase of the power of scholars marked the 
decadence of the Church's authority, but also because the 



LJFE IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGE. 455 



I 



most hopeful era in European history was that in which 
scholars held their true place. 

During the whole of the fifteenth century, everywhere 
in Europe where there were riches and that prosperity 
which riches bring, the new secular spirit was rapidly 
developed. In Flanders, which was then a hive of 
industry, we notice it, just as we do in Italy at the same 
period. " Man abandoned," says M. Taine, " the ascetic 
and ecclesiastical regime that he might interest himself 
in nature and enjoy life. The ancient compression was 
relaxed : he began to prize strength, health, beauty, and 
pleasure. On all sides we see the mediaeval spirit under- 
going change and disintegration. An elegant and refined 
architecture, very different from the early Gothic, con- 
verted stone into lace, festooning churches with pinna- 
cles, trefoils, and intricate mull ions, so that they became 
like vast caskets, the products rather of fancy than of 
faith as of old, less calculated to excite piety than 
wonder. In like manner chivalry, which in its earlier 
day was simply the highest lay service of the Church, 
became a mere parade. In Chaucer and in Froissart we 
are spectators of the knights of the time, — their pomp, 
their tourneys, their processions, and their banquets (all 
the marks of the new reign of frivolity and fashion), 
their extravagant and overcharged costumes, the crea- 
tions of an infatuated and licentious imagination. In 
short, in France, in Flanders, and in Italy, the life of 
the court and tlie princes seems a perpetual carnival." 

At the marriage of Philip the Good, Duke of 



45G MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 

Burgundy (1420), the streets of Bruges were hung witli 
tapestry; for eight days and eight nights a stone lion 
spurted forth Rhine wine, while a stone stag discharged 
Beaune Burgundy, and at meal-time a unicorn poured 
out rose-water or malvoisie. " On the entry of the 
Dauphin into the city," says Taine, "eight hundred 
merchants of divers nations advanced to meet him, all 
clad in garments of silk and velvet. At another cere- 
monial, the duke appears with a saddle and bridle 
covered with precious stones ; nine pages covered with 
plumes and jewels followed him, one of the pages bear- 
ing a salad-bowl of the value of one hundred thousand 
crowns, the duke himself wearing jewels estimated in 
value at a million. '^ And yet these men, in the midst 
of all this pomp, ostentation, and luxury, claimed to be 
good Christians, and especially good Catholics. If such 
was the case, it is clear that obedience to the authority 
of the Church, which during the Middle Age had en- 
joined the practice of asceticism and self-denial, was no 
longer yielded, just as the virtues which had been re- 
garded of old as typical of the true Christian had gone 
entirely o.ut of fashion. While men professed to respect 
the authority of the Church, and claimed to be, above 
all else, good orthodox Catholics, the whole policy of 
their lives was such as to destroy the faith of the world 
both in the Church's authority and teachings. 

I have thus endeavored to explain how the two classes 
of men who have ruled Europe in modern times — the 
scholars and the rich — gradually established their power 



INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES. 457 



ill the fifteenth century in formidable, even if uncon- 
scious, antagonism to that of the Church. The result 
was a complete revolution in the ruling power of Eu- 
rope, no less real because it was silent and gradual, and 
Jihis power, becoming first the strong supporter of the 
national as opposed to the ecclesiastical policy of rule, 
and afterwards wholly identified with it, broke up the 
mediaeval conception of life and its government. 

Tliis movement was accelerated by the inventions and 
maritime discoveries which, before the fifteenth century 
closed, inspired man with greater confidence in himself, 
because it gave him fuller control over the forces of 
nature and new power to make them minister to his 
selfish desires. Certainly it needs no argument to show 
that whatever other effect upon the general life and 
ideas of .the time may have been produced by the 
general use of gunpowder in war, and the invention 
of printing, these changes must have very sensibly 
affected the position of those who had wielded absolute 
authority both in the Church and the State. They 
meant that power was being transferred from the hands 
of the few to those of the many; they were potent 
agencies, first, to instruct the many as to the desirable 
and attractive objects of life which were within their 
grasp, and, secondly, to teach the common soldiers of 
the armies for the first time in history that they had 
become by the use of fire-arms practically equal in force 
to those whose superiority in war, as it was conducted 
during the Middle Age, bad practically overwhelmed 



458 MEDIJEVAL HISTORY. 

them. We may be quite sure that the sense of their 
importance and power, and of the possibilities within 
their reach, thus begotten among vast multitudes who 
for many generations had been only humble and sub- 
missive slaves to power, as embodied in the Church or 
the monarch, was the true germ of all the revolts 
against the authority of both which have characterized 
European life ever since the sixteenth century. 

The fifteenth century was fruitful in these germs, 
which grew up and literally choked out the life of pre- 
ceding ages. Not only were men's minds enlarged and 
stimulated by the results of the invention of printing, 
and their power against the old system of rule immeas- 
urably increased by the use of gunpowder in war, but 
new avenues were opened about the same time to the 
fresh activity and energy of that class of the popula- 
tion, far the most numerous of any, whose special in- 
terests had hitherto been wholly neglected by those who 
governed theui. 

Among other means of gaining wealth and power 
which tempted the new-born spirit of enterprise and ad- 
venture, were those presented by the great maritime dis- 
coveries of the fifteenth and the early part of the sixteenth 
century. These stimulated most powerfully the imagi- 
nation of men who had just become conscious of their 
power. The discovery of America, the voyage to India 
by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and the circunuiavi- 
gation of the globe by Magellan and liis voyage through 
the Pacific Ocean, were events of momentous magnitude. 



COMMERCIAL INTERESTS. 459 

producing quite as much change in the moral and in- 
tellectual life of Europe as in the geographical notions 
vvhich then prevailed. It was not merely that by these 
discoveries a new hemisphere had been added to the Old 
World, but that the new interests which were created by 
these discoveries totally changed the current of men's 
thoughts and opinions, and that, these interests becoming, 
as time went on, more and more important, the result was 
that from that day to this the relations of America to 
Europe have had a preponderating influence in deter- 
mining the general policy of the government of the 
principal nations of the world. Commercial interests, 
industrial progress, colonial dominion, national policy 
in place of dynastic or family aggrandizement, — these 
have been the springs of government in modern times; 
and their source is to be sought in the discovery of 
America and the new methods of reaching the East. 

The Church's authority, at least as an infallible ex- 
pounder of scientific truth, was not strengthened by these 
discoveries. Her cosmogony, by which she taught that 
the earth must be flat and that there could be no anti- 
podes, was proved, of course, to be fallacious. And yet 
it is worthy of remark, as a strange mingling of the old 
with the new, and as showing the general prevalence of 
the belief that the great object of maritime discovery was 
to make the inhabitants of the new countries Christians, 
that as soon as Ferdinand and Isabella had learned from 
Columbus the success of his voyage they made a formal 
application to the Pope (Alexander VI.) to confirm to 



460 MEDIyEVAL HISTORY. 

the crown of Spain tlie conntries which the great navi- 
gator had discovered. And the Pope, exercising in the 
premises the power of the chief and universal bishop of 
Christendom, granted tlie application, and fixed as the 
boundary between the dominions of Spain and Portugal 
a line drawn from the Arctic to the Antarctic circle, one 
hundred leagues west of the Azores. 

Another curious illustration of this mingling of the 
old faith wnth the new desires in men^s minds in this era 
is found in the famous media3val legend of Faust, or of 
the Devil and Dr. Faustus, as it was then called. The 
scholars of that day were allured by the secret of enjoy- 
ment as the source of strength possessed by the ancients, 
but they believed that they could recover this lost treas- 
ure only by the suicide of their souls, or, what was equiv- 
alent to it, the censure of the Church. "So great was 
the temptation," says Mr. Symonds, '' that Faustus paid 
the price. After imbibing all the knowledge of his age, 
he sold himself to the Devil, in order that his thirst for 
experience might be quenched and his grasp on the world 
strengthened. His first use of this dearly-bought power 
was to make blind Homer sing to him ; Amphion tunes 
his harp in concert with Mephistopheles ; Alexander rises 
from the dead at his behest, with all his legionaries ; and 
Helen is given to him for a bride. The story of Faustus 
is, therefore, a parable of the impotent yearnings of the 
spirit in the Middle k^^^ its passionate aspirations, its 
fettered curiosity, combined with the conscience-stricken 
desire to pluck the forbidden fruit." 



POPULAR DISCONTENT. 461 

Nor was this restlessness confined to ricli men, or 
strong men, or learned men. It had penetrated deep into 
the minds of the masses, and gave token that a new era, 
that of an aggressive individualism, was approaching. 
This was manifested in different ways in different coun- 
tries of Europe as the peculiar circumstances of each 
differed, but the spirit of revolt was conspicuous in all 
during the fifteenth century. In England it showed 
itself by a popular insurrection against the social evils 
of the time in Church and State, which is known in his- 
tory as Jack Cade's insurrection. In Germany, where 
the mass of the peasants were so utterly crushed by the 
despotism of their rulers that no power of resistance 
was left, the same spirit timidly manifested itself in the 
popular literature of the time. The most remarkable 
books in Germany of that time are the Eulenspiegel 
(Owl-Glass) and Heinecke Fuchs (Reynard the Fox), 
and they both have this common characteristic, hostility 
to the existing social condition, and especially to the 
abuses of the Church. The fable of the fox is made 
a symbolical representation of the defects and vices of 
human society, and it is applied to the conduct of dif- 
ferent classes of men, which is brought to the standard 
of the sober good sense and homely morality which are 
asserted to be the only true source of the claim whereby 
kings hold their crowns, princes their lands, and all 
authorities and powers their due value. Such were some 
of the germs which, fermenting in the popular mind in 

Germany, grew in fifty years with such amazing rapidity 

39* 



462 MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 

that they form the true basis of the Reformation of 
Luther and of the Peasants' War. 

This same era of transition, which I have called that 
of secularization, had its peculiar characteristics of a lit- 
erary kind in Italy, as elsewhere. Ever since the days 
of the Emperor Frederick II., the free-thinking king of 
the two Sicilies, in the middle of the fourteenth century, 
the tendency of the writings of those who moved the 
popular enthusiasm was against the principle of ab- 
solute authority and in favor of individualism. This 
tendency showed itself by constant appeals to the human 
side of man's nature, as opposed to the old notion that 
man's position in this world was chiefly that of proba- 
tion or preparation for a better state. Petrarch and 
Boccaccio, the great poets of that time, have been called 
essentially humanists. Their humanism consisted in a 
new and vital perception of the dignity of man as a 
rational being, apart from theological determinations, 
and in the further conception that classic literature alone 
displayed human nature in the plenitude of intellectual 
and moral freedom. Out of the developments of these 
opinions grew the Renaissance, or the revival of learn- 
ing, which was simply a revolt against the old theories 
of belief, made in utter disgust with their barren results, 
and using the free spirit of antiquity as an instrument 
of reform. But the history of this glorious revival and 
of its permanent influence upon the civilization of 
Europe does not come within the scope of these studies. 

I have thus come through long ages of night and 



CONCLUSION. 463 



darkness to the dawn of that new day, in the splendor 
of whose meridian we now live. If I have taught any 
juster appreciation of our own modern life by showing 
how, born out of chaos, it has been nurtured by the 
gifts of the noblest intellects of all time, and its better 
part preserved amidst the strife and convulsions of ages, 
I shall have accomplished my purpose. 



APPEISTDIX. 



BOOKS OF REFERENCE. 

The following is a, list of books of authority, in French and 
English, concerning the history of the Middle Age. It might be 
made much fuller; but I have thought it best to give the titles of 
those books only which may be found in any well-furnished public 

library. 

» 

Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 

Milman, History of Latin Christianity. 

Merivale, History of the Romans. 

Champagny, Etudes sur I'Empire Romain. 

Arnold, Roman Provincial Administration. 

Seeley, Roman Imperialism. 

Dureau de la Malle, Economic politique des Romains. 

Ozanam, Civilization in the Fifth Century. 

Laurent, Etudes sur I'Histoire de THumanite. 

Savigny, Droit Romain. 

Guizot, Civilization in France. 

Bryce, Holy Roman Empire. 

Church, Beginning of the Middle Ages. 

Coulangcs, La Cite antique. 

Coulanges, Institutions politiques de la France. 

Boissier, La Religion Romaine. 

Duruy, Histoire des Romains. 

Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders. 

Flint, Philosophy of History. 

Ockley, History of the Saracens. 

Irving, Life of Mahomet. 

465 



466 APPENDIX. 



Bosworth Smith, Life of Mohammed. 
Clarke, Ten Great Religions. 
Dollinger, The Gentile and the Jew. 
Lea, Studies in Church History. *^ 
Kenan, Etudes. 



"Wallon, Histoire de I'Esclavage. 

Conde, Arabs in Spain. 

Coppee, Conquest of Spain by the Arabs. 

Finlay, History of Greece. 

M'Lear, Early Missionaries. 

Thierry, Eecits Merovingiens. 

Thierry, Conquete d'Angleterre. 

Amedee Thierry, Recits de I'Histoire Romaine au Y^ Siecle. 

Thierry, Histoire du Tiers-Etat. 

Martin, History of France. 

Mullinger, Schools under Charlemagne. 

Boutaric, La France sous Philippe le Bel. 

Boutaric, St. Louis et Alphonse de Poitiers. 

Cantu, Histoire des Italiens. 

Sismondi, Histoire des Republiques Italiens. 

Prescott, Life of Philip II. 

Freeman, Norman Conquest. 

Freeman, Historical Geography. 

Palgrave, English Commonwealth. 

Stubbs, Constitutional History of England. 

Hallam, Middle Ages. 

Pearson, History of the Middle Age in England. 

Creasy, History of the Middle Age in England. 

Green, History of the English People. 

Knight, History of England. 

Hook, Archbishops of Canterbury. 

Maine, Ancient Law. 

Maine, Earl}- History of Institutions. 

Maine, Village Communities. 



APPENDIX. 467 



Kemusat, Life of Anselm. 

Michaud, Histoire des Croisades. 

Cherrier, Histoire des Empereurs de la Maison de Souabe. 

Coxe, House of Austria. 

Schaff, Church History. \^ 

Kanke, History of the Popes. 

Villemain, Gregory VII 

Villari, Machiavelli. 

Villari, Savonarola. 



Kohlrausch, History of Germany. 

Lewis, History of Germany. 

Haureau, La Scolastique. 

Montalembert, Monks of the West. 

Lacordaire, Vie de St. Dominic. 

Oliphant, Life of St. Francis of Assisi. 

Lacroix, Arts of the Middle Age. ^ 

Symonds, The Renaissance in Italy. 

Burckhardt, The Renaissance in Italy. 

Taine, Italy and the Netherlands. 

Newman, The Idea of a University. 

Maurice, Mediseval Philosophy. 

Thornton, History of Labor. 

Thorold Rogers, History of Prices. 

Draper, Intellectual Development of Europe. 

Lecky, History of Rationalism. 

Lecky, History of European Morals. 

Doniol, Histoire des Classes ouvrigres. 

Vin9ard, Histoire du Travail. 

Levasseur, Les Classes ouvrieres. 

Depping, Histoire du Commerce dans le Levant. 

Worn, Histoire de la Ligue Hanseatique. 

Camden Society's publications. 



INDEX. 



Alaric, 23. 

Visigothic king, 60. 
Albigensian crusade, 365. 
Alcuin as a teacher, 365. 
Alfred of England, 210. 
American life, historical basis, 191. 
Anglo-Saxons, whence they came, 
199. 

occupation of England, 201. 

organization and traits, 203. 
Antrustions, 72. 
Arabian boundaries, 102. 

commerce, 103. 

philosophy, 382, 

religion, 105. 
Arian Goths, 42. 

Arians, toleration of Catholic wor- 
ship, 45. 
Aristotle and the schoolmen, 375. 
Army, Roman, in time of Moham- 
med, 111. 
Assimilation of Roman and barba- 
rian ideas, 192. 
Attila and Pope Leo, 32. 

and the Huns, 262. 

B. 

Babylonian captivity, 299. 
Barbarian invasions, 42. 
Barbarians, tribes, 23. 

classes among, 44. 

education, 46. 



Barbarians, equality and personal 
independence, 47. 

ideas of crime, 49. 
Battle of Poitiers, 77. 
Benedictine rule, 337. 
Bishops, mediaeval, 273. 

condemned by Popes, 274. 
Bond-laborers, 393. 
Bull, Golden, 183. 
Byzantine Empire, 107. 

C. 
Canon law, 381. 
Canossa, 177. 
Capet, the family of, 147. 
Champs de Mars, 76. 
Charlemagne, family, 75. 

crowned Emperor, 82. 

conquests, 86. 

King of the Franks, 89. 

capitularies, 91. 

patron of learning, 93. 

hero of legend, 94. 

failure of his system, 95, 120. 

founder of modern Germany, 
96. 

extent of his Empire, 129. 

theory of his Empire, 83. 

degeneracy of his race, 131. 

attitude towards the Church, 
280. 
Chef-d'oeuvre, 402. 
Chivalry as a moral influence, 352. 
40 469 



470 



INDEX. 



Chivalry unknown in antiquity, 

347. 
Christianity before Constantine, 28. 
influence of moral precepts, 27. 
Church, primitive organization of, 
29. 
after Constantine, 55. 
under the Merovingians, 62. 
influence of its unity and visi- 
. bility, 271. 

ecclesiastical punishments, 295. 
the Babylonian captivity, 299. 
the great schism, 300, 
Council of Constance, 301. 
relations to Roman Empire, 31. 

to nationalities, 35. 
reaction against its authority, 

303. 
its authority in science over- 
thrown, 460. 
Cities of Asia Minor, their wealth, 

427. 
Civil and canon law, study of, 381. 
Clement of Ireland, 367. 
Clovis, Roman Consul, 52. 

baptism of, 59. 
Collegia, 388. 

Commerce, Italian and German, 
424. 
its humanizing influence, 435. 
fosters religious toleration, 436. 
and modern habits of life, 437. 
and international relations, 438. 
Concordat of Worms, 293. 
Condottieri, 326. 
Conflicts of Popes with sovereigns, 

292. 
Confreries, 405. 

Conversion of Northern tribes, 65. 
Crusaders, characteristics, 354. 
Crusades aff"ect commerce, 427. 
against the Albigenses, 355. 



Crusades in Spain, 357. 

on feudal system, 152. 



Discovery of America, effect upon 
commercial policy, 459. 

Dominican and Franciscan school- 
men, 384. 

E. 

Electors of the Emperor, 183. 
Emperors, German, power in Rome, 
173. 
reformers of the Papacy, 174. 
Empire, Eastern, condition of, in 

time of Mohammed, 107. 
England, Roman conquest and rule, 
193. 
Danish invasions, 209. 
Christianity introduced, 211. 
the Church becomes Roman, 

213. 
Dunstan, 215. 
the Norman conquest, 218. 
feudal system under the Nor- 
man kings, 220. 
Archbishop Langton, 224. 
King John and Magna Charta, 

224. 
responsibility of the king to 

the nation, 204. 
King Alfred, 209. 
William the Conqueror, 220. 
trial by jury, 221. 
John, loss of Norman prov- 
inces, 223. 
quarrel with the Pope, 223. 
Henry III., reign of favorites, 

226. 
the Church and the laity, 230. 



INDEX. 



471 



England, the Church the refuge of 
educated men, 232. 
statutes of Provisors and Prse- 

munire, 233. 
Black Death, 242. 
villenage, extinction of, 246. 
the parish, 240. 

population in Middle Age, 242. 
education, mediaeval, 360. 
Roman, 361. 
of workmen, 401. 
Simon de Montfort, 227. 
rise of House of Commons, 227. 
Lan franc, 228. 
Anselm archbishop, 229. 
Norman policy towards the 

Church, 229. 
policy of the Church, 231. 
Dominicans and Franciscans, 

233. 
Wyclif and Lollardy, 234. 
Hundred- Years' War, 235. 
Anglo-Norman life, 237. 
the towns and the gildes, 239. 
condition of the people, 241. 
Edward III. sells manumis- 
sions, 396. 
the labor question, 411. 
English life, historical basis, 189. 

possessions in France, 235. 
Equality among the barbarians, 47. 
Europe after Charlemagne's death, 

129. 
Excommunication and interdict, 
294. 

F. 

Faust, legend of, in the Middle Age, 

460. 
Feudal commendation, 139. 

power to resist invasion, 144. 

system, sketch of, 135. 



Fiefs, how conferred, 137. 

characteristic of, 143. 
Fixed services, 394. 
France, Capet, Hugh, king, 147. 

English kings feudal lords in, 
149. 

free cities in, 151. 

Hundred-Years' War, 153. 

roturiers become nobles in, 153. 

States-General, 154, 299. 

centralization, 155. 

absorption of fiefs, 156. 

natural boundaries, 157. 
Franciscans, life of, 345. 
Frank-pledge, 404. 
Franks, original seat of, 25. 

their position and character, 58. 
Frederick Barbarossa, 314. 
Frederick II. Emperor, 317. 
Free towns, political system in, 389. 

exactions in, 406. 



G. 

German tribes, 161. 

dyni^sties, 164. 
Germany, development of feudal 
system in, 159. 

primitive characteristios, 166. 

architecture, 168. 

roads, 169. 

when first a true nation, 308. 

Henry of Saxony, 163. 

feudal independence, 165. 

free cities, 167. 

their kings Roman Emperors, 
170. 

Otho the Great in Italy, 171. 

relations of Emperors to the 
Popes, 172. 

rule of Emperors in Italy, 175. 



472 



INDEX. 



Germany, the Investitures, 176, 289. 

Henry IV. and Gregory VII., 
177. 

Frederick Barbarossa and the 
towns in Italy, 179. 

Electors of the Emperor, 183. 

Council of Constance, 185. 

results of decentralization, 187. 

Rudolph of Hapsburg, 187. 

Guelphs and Ghibelines, 316. 

Peasants' War, 186. 
Gildes, origin of, 403. 

and confreries, 397. 

H. 

Hanseatic League, 429. 

its origin and objects, 430. 

its work, 431. 

and Edward III., 433. 

its final dissolution, 434. 
Heraclius, 108. 
Heresies, Christian, 109. 
Hermits and cenobites in Egypt, 

335. 
Hildebrand, Gregory VII., 283. 
Holy Roman Empire, theory of, 83. 
Honor, the point of, 351. 

I. 

Iconoclastic dispute, 266. 
India, civilization of, 414. 
Indirect influences in history, 333. 
Individualism and authority, 441. 
International relations and com- 
merce, 439. 
Invaders, permanent occupation of, 
23. 

number of, 51. 

principles of government, 53. 
Invasions, 21. 

nature of, 50. 



Inventions and maritime discover- 
ies, 457. 
" Investitures," the, 176, 289. 
Italian cities, traffic, 425. 
Italy, sentiment of nationality in, 
306. 
when first a true nation, 308. 
and the Lombards, 310. 
civil power of the Bishop of 

Rome, 311. 
castles and city walls built, 313. 
Lombard League, 315. 
city republics, 319. 
tyrants and usurpers in the 

cities, 325. 
the ideal Italian prince, 327. 
tyranny and culture combined, 

329. 
invasion by Charles VIII. of 

France, 330. 
dynasties at the close of the 
fifteenth century, 331. 

J. 

Jeanne d'Arc, 155. 
John of England, 149. 

K. 

Knights employed in the lay service 
of the Church, 348. 

trained by the Church, 349. 

the point of honor, 351, 
Koran, how made up, 118. 



Labor in antiquity, 387. 

question in England and France, 
410. 
La Jacquerie, 409. 
Latin language, 40. 
Le droit d'auhaine, 439. 



INDEX. 



473 



Life in the later Middle Age, 455. 
Literature, popular, in Germany 

and Italy, 461, 
Lombard League, the, 315. 
Luxury and wealth in Flanders, 

455. 

M. 

Mayors of the Palace, 74. 
Mediaeval knight, the, .347. 

society, four active forces in, 16. 

conception of life, 441. 
Medici, how they employed their 

riches, 464. 
Medicine, study of, 383. 
Merovingian kingdom, 71. 
Middle Age, duration, 13. 

general characteristics, 14. 

isolation of the people, 417. 
Mohammed, early lifi', 112. 

doctrines, religious ideas, 113. 

not an impostor, 117. 

conversion of the Arabs, 119. 

armed propagandism, 121. 

conquests of his followers, 123, 
Monasticism not confined to Chris- 
tian practice, 334. 

work of Benedictine monks, 
339. 

N. 

National policy and ambition, 447. 
wars and mediaeval ideas, 449. 
Nationalities and the Church, 445. 
Nations in universities, 377. 
Northmen, invasion, 145. 



Papal rule, its predominance, 251. 

theory, 252. 

missionaries, 259. 
Patriarchates, 255, 
Peasant proprietors and yeomeu, 395. 

40 



Peasants, condition of, in France, 

408, 409. 
Pepin, crowned king, 78. 

Patrician of Rome, 81. 
Persia in the time of Mohammed, 

111. 
Philip Augustus, 377. 
Philip the Good, magnificence of 

his wedding, 45G. 
Pilate, superscription on the cross, 

39. 
Pope, supremacy of the, 257. 

position in the later Middle 
Age, 451. 
Popes and the invasions, 261. 
greatness of the early, 267. 
eifect of their rule, 269. 
growth of their pretensions, 

275. 
as Italian princes, 450. 
decline of prestige in the fif- 
teenth century, 446. 
alliance with the Emperors, 

effects of, 277. 
disputes with different sover- 
eigns, 294. 
relations with barbarians, 263. 
Prosperity of Italian cities, 453. 

R. 

Realists and Nominalists, 374. 
Riches, increase of, as affecting the 

Church's power, 453. 
Roman and Christian ideas, 26. 

Empire, Western, date of ex- 
tinction, 13. 

civilization, elements of, 10. 

Empire, limits, 18. 

Empire, prosperity, 19. 

cities in Gaul, 20, 

materioiism, 27. 

administration, 34. 



474 



INDEX. 



Koman rule of the provinces, 37. 
mnnicipia, 37, 38. 
army in time of Mohammed, 
111. 
Rome, recognition of Pope of, 56. 
commerce and Eoman civiliza- 
tion, 416. 
commerce, routes to the East, 
421. 

S. 
St. Ambrose, 32. 
St. Auskar, 68. 

St. Augustine's theory, 264, 285. 
St. Benedict, 337. 
St. Bernard, 349. 
St. Boniface, 68. 
St. Columhan and St. Gall, 66. 
St. Dominic, 342. 
St. Francis of Assisi, 343. 
Saracenic and Christian civilization 
contrasted, 418. 
invasions, 99. 
Saracens, commerce and civilization 

of the, 419. 
Saxon Heptarchy, 208. 
Scholasticism, 371. 
Schools, Imperial organization, 361. 
cathedral and monastic, 363. 
influence of the palace, 369. 
Science and the Church, 442. 
Secularization of ideas, 444. 
Self-made men in antiquity, 386. 
Serfs and villeins, 143. 
Simony and a married clergy, 284. 
Slavery and the invasions, 390. 

economic motives in its aboli- 
tion, 395. 
Slaves in Rome, 389. 
Statute of Laborers, 397. 



Swabia, revolt of, 184. 
Switzerland, revolt of, 184. 

T. 

Taille and hmihan, 408. 
Teutonic tribes, 25. 

ideas, 53. 
Theodosius, penance of, 32. 
Thierry, description of the life of 

the Frankish kings, 73. 
Towns, freedom of, 151. 
Trade, monopoly in towns, 400, 
Transition from slavery to serfdom, 

393. 

U. 

Ulphilas and the Goths, 45. 

Universals, 374. 

University organization, 377. 

of Paris, and its power, 379. 

of Bologna, 380. 
Usury condemned by the Church, 
435. 

V. 

Vandals, 23. 

Venice, commercial policy, 426. 
Verdun, treaty of, 133. 
Village communities, 43. 
Visigoths, 23. 

W. 

War of Investitures, 287. 

Weregeld, 49. 

Workmen, education of, 40 1 . 

in towns, 396. 
World-monarchy and world-religion, 

278. 
Worldliness and luxury, 453. 
Wyclif, 234. 



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